The four astronauts slated to go to the moon on NASA's upcoming Artemis 2 mission. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Astronauts haven't visited our nearest celestial neighbor since 1972. That's when NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt spent three days on the moon before rejoining Apollo 17 crewmate NASA astronaut Ron Evans aboard their command module in lunar orbit. After two more days circling the moon, the trio ignited their engine on a return trajectory back to Earth. As they flew away, theirs became the last sets of eyes to see the moon up close.

Now, after decades of ever-elongating timelines, evolving mission frameworks and years of delays, NASA is ready to go back. The U.S. space agency's Artemis program faces its second mission in 2026, and it will be the first to carry a crew of astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft. The Artemis 2 mission is designed to fly its crew once around the moon before returning them to Earth over the course of about 10 days, during which the astronauts will become the first in a generation to see the moon up close.

Through its series of planned Artemis missions, NASA plans to establish a permanent outpost on the moon. From there, the agency hopes to develop and mature the technologies needed to expand deeper into the solar system to places like Mars.

A lot of U.S. spaceflight discourse this past year has focused on when NASA will get boots on the lunar surface, and whether U.S. astronauts will land on the moon's southern polar region before a group of Chinese taikonauts plants their flag there first. When President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal was released, the administration put a stronger emphasis on NASA's human exploration of space —  despite cutting NASA's funding by nearly a quarter and its science programs virtually in half. That emphasis, though, put a spotlight on the Artemis program and invited deeper scrutiny of NASA's launch system and lunar lander development.

Under NASA's current plan, Artemis 2 and 3 rely on the agency's SLS rocket to launch its Orion spacecraft to cislunar space, where it will dock with the Gateway space station, for transfer to a lunar lander for the last leg down to the surface. NASA's Human Landing Services (HLS) contract for that vehicle was awarded to SpaceX for a version of their Starship vehicle currently being developed to transport Artemis 3 astronauts down to the moon's surface — a controversial decision which elicited industry pushback and, more recently, one that NASA has begun backpedalling on.

Criticisms of both SLS and Starship have called the program's architecture and timeline into question. Before its first launch in 2022, SLS spent more than a decade in development at a cost of nearly $50 billion since 2006.

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In the time it took to turn the SLS design schematics to a fully realized and assembled rocket, SpaceX introduced the world to reliable rocket reusability — not something SLS was designed for. And, with the successful recovery and relaunch of SpaceX's newest Super Heavy booster this year, some have questioned whether SLS's $4 billion-per-launch price tag is the most cost-effective way to send Orion to orbit.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is prepped for the upcoming launched. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Starship is another story. SpaceX seems to have worked out much of the kinks developing the Super Heavy booster responsible for launching Starship — though a recent mishap of the booster's latest version did rupture during a pressurization test. The company has successfully caught three Super Heavy boosters using the giant "Mechazilla" chopstick-like arms attached to the rocket's launch tower, and managed to refly one of those boosters during one of Starship's 2025 test flights. Starship, however, did not have as good a year.

Of its five launches in 2025, Starship only completed its mission objectives on the final two. The development delays have raised concerns about the vehicle's readiness for Artemis 3, which NASA had hoped to launch in 2027, but internal SpaceX documents obtained by Politico in November indicate the company doesn't expect Starship to be ready for that mission until 2028.

U.S. lawmakers, space industry leaders and even former NASA administrators have spoken out publicly in criticism of Starship's delayed development, and are raising red flags that such delays could hand control of the moon to China.

During testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee in September, former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine cautioned against positioning the Artemis program to become completely reliant on SpaceX for mission success. "Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China's projected timeline," he said.

Artist's illustration of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on the moon during an Artemis astronaut mission for NASA. (Image credit: SpaceX)

That's a problem, experts say. The U.S. and China are both eyeing the moon's southern polar region to set up camp, where scientists believe there is an abundance of water ice — a valuable resource that can be used to provide astronauts with everything from suitable drinking water to rocket fuel. It's also a matter of national security. "If our adversaries achieve dominant space capabilities, it would pose a profound risk to America," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during the Commerce Committee hearing at which Bridenstine testified.

NASA, too, is feeling the pressure. Unsatisfied with SpaceX's progress, acting agency administrator Sean Duffy announced in October that NASA was considering reopening the HLS contract to other bidders, including Blue Origin, who objected to Starship's selection over their Blue Moon lander, which is originally slated for Artemis 5. Now, NASA may decide to go with whichever lander is ready first, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has voiced skepticism over the competing company's ability to qualify their lander before SpaceX does so with Starship.

Blue Origin's large, crew-carrying Mark 2 moon lander can deliver up to 22 tons (20 metric tons) to the lunar surface in a reusable configuration or up to 33 tons (30 metric tons) in a one-way configuration.  (Image credit: Blue Origin)

For its part, China's lunar ambitions and timeline to achieve them are about on par with the U.S., only the speed at which they're developing the technologies to accomplish those goals is quickly worrying those in the U.S. space industry who see stalls in Artemis' evolution.

In 2025, China has continued to close key technical gaps, advancing work on its Long March 10 lunar rocket, next-generation crewed spacecraft (named Mengzhou) and a crewed lunar lander. Beijing has also pressed ahead with reusable launch vehicle tests (though its most recent landing attempts were unsuccessful) reinforcing a development cadence that looks increasingly steady as Artemis faces schedule pressure.

The question still remains which country will successfully land astronauts (or taikonauts) back on the moon first, but there's no denying which nation will be the first to fly a crew to lunar space in the new millennium.

After Artemis 1, NASA named the crew of the upcoming Artemis 2 flight. The mission will be flown by NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman as Artemis 2 commander, Victor Glover as pilot, and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen as mission specialists. The quartet has spent the last three years training for every aspect of their flight around the moon, with a major ramp-up over the past year that has included NASA's broader Artemis team.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts address a crowd. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

"The consolidation and momentum that's building in the wider team — the flight control team, the launch control team — we are firing on all cylinders with those guys doing problem solving, answering questions that no one knows the real answer to," Koch told Space.com in an interview. "Every person that walks into every room is just ready to contribute the most that they can and to get to the right answer as a team," she said.

Koch and the other members of the Artemis 2 crew are eager to launch on their mission, and if NASA's current schedule holds, they may get that opportunity as early as February 2026. NASA is targeting no earlier than Feb. 5 for the first Artemis 2 launch window, and may roll the mission's completed SLS rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, to Launch Complex-39B as early as January. If they run into another delay, the space agency has determined additional launch windows in the months to follow, through April.

Once the day of their launch does arrive, the Artemis 2 crew will board the Orion spacecraft and ride SLS into Earth's orbit for a mission that will last roughly ten days. Should the launch go smoothly and checkouts of Orion's systems while in orbit come back nominal, a translunar injection burn of SLS's upper stage will propel Orion into a free-return trajectory around the moon, slingshotting the spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth on a course in the shape of a figure-eight. The trajectory doesn't fully place Orion in lunar orbit, but it guarantees the spacecraft and crew's return to Earth regardless of any anomalies they might encounter around the moon.

NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft with its launch abort system is stacked atop the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket (Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett)

While the main objective of Artemis 2 is to put Orion through its paces on its first mission carrying astronauts, the crew will also conduct a series of science experiments. Some of that research involves the astronauts themselves, who will become their own biomedical subjects to gather in-flight data on the effects the human body experiences beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since Apollo, including investigations into things like radiation exposure and the immune system.

In addition to humanity's long-awaited return to the moon, Artemis 2 is breaking ground in other historical ways as well. Depending on when it launches, Orion's flight around the moon may take the Artemis 2 crew further from Earth than any previous crewed mission — potentially breaking the record set during Apollo 13.

Koch and Glover will also be making history in their own right, as the first woman and first person of color to fly to the moon.

Thus, for all the uncertainty surrounding Artemis' long-term architecture, Artemis 2 represents something far simpler. It will send humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in more than half a century, reestablishing a capability the U.S. at one time may have taken for granted.

Whether Artemis ultimately fulfills its promise of sustained lunar exploration, or is reshaped by politics, budgets and competition with China, the program's first crewed flight around the moon will mark a definitive turning point. In 2026, humanity isn't just planning to return to lunar space — it's actually going.

Josh Dinner is the Staff Writer for Spaceflight at Space.com. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships and crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144-scale model rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website, and follow him on X, where he mostly posts in haiku.

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