At 6:24 PM Eastern time tonight, a crew of four astronauts will strap into NASA's Orion spacecraft, sit atop a 32-story rocket, and begin the first crewed journey to the Moon since December 1972. If all goes to plan, in ten days they will splash down in the Pacific as the only humans alive who have ever flown beyond low Earth orbit.
The mission is called Artemis II. The launch window is two hours, running from 6:24 to 8:24 PM ET from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Weather is forecast at 80% favorable. There is no reason to expect a scrub.
This is not a drill, a preview, or a dress rehearsal. Humans are going to the Moon.
The Four People Making History
Commander Reid Wiseman, 51, is a Navy test pilot and former astronaut who spent 165 days aboard the International Space Station in 2014. He has been NASA's chief astronaut and now commands the mission that will define his career. He will be the first Artemis crew member to speak from beyond Earth orbit.
Pilot Victor Glover, 49, became the first Black astronaut to live aboard the ISS on a long-duration mission in 2020–2021. His Artemis II flight will make him the first Black astronaut — and first person of color — to travel to the Moon's vicinity. He served as a Navy fighter pilot before joining NASA.
Mission Specialist Christina Koch, 47, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman: 328 consecutive days in orbit from 2019 to 2020. Her Artemis II flight will make her the first woman to travel to the Moon.
Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, 47, is a Canadian Space Agency astronaut and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. He will be the first Canadian — and the first non-American — to fly to the Moon.
All four entered medical quarantine weeks ago in Houston. Backup mission specialist Jenni Gibbons remains on standby.
What Actually Happens on This Flight
Artemis II is not a lunar landing. That is Artemis III, currently targeted for 2027. Artemis II's mission is explicitly a crewed test flight: put four humans in Orion, push them into deep space, fly them around the Moon, and bring them home alive. If you can do that, you can land on the Moon.
The mission profile unfolds in phases:
Phase 1 — Earth Orbit Systems Check (hours 1–4 after launch): After reaching a 44,555-mile-by-115-mile orbit, the crew runs a comprehensive systems check of Orion's life support, communications, power, and environmental controls. Commander Wiseman described it bluntly: "Can it scrub our carbon dioxide? Can it keep us alive? Can we drink water? Can we go to the bathroom? All those basic human functions." This phase tests whether the spacecraft is safe to commit to deep space. The crew then takes a planned four-hour nap.
Phase 2 — Trans-Lunar Injection (day 1–2): Orion's service module engine fires to push the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon. This burn commits the crew to the lunar trajectory. From this point forward, they are going to the Moon whether they want to or not — there is no return option until they complete the free-return arc.
Phase 3 — Lunar Approach (days 3–5): The spacecraft coasts toward the Moon. The crew will observe Earth growing smaller for the first time since 1972. On approach, they will be able to see parts of the lunar far side that no human has observed from this distance with their own eyes.
Phase 4 — Lunar Flyby (days 5–6): Orion passes behind the Moon on a free-return trajectory — a path that naturally swings the spacecraft back toward Earth without additional propulsion. At closest approach, the crew will fly approximately 7,500 kilometers beyond the Moon's far side. They will temporarily lose radio contact with Earth as they pass behind the lunar disk. This is the same communications blackout experienced by Apollo crews — the only silence deeper than the silence of space.
Phase 5 — Deep Space Testing and Return (days 6–9): The crew conducts additional systems evaluations while heading home — testing power systems, thermal controls, and crew operations in deep space. These are conditions that cannot be replicated in low Earth orbit or in simulation.
Phase 6 — Reentry and Splashdown (day 10): Orion reenters Earth's atmosphere at approximately 25,000 mph — faster than any crewed spacecraft reentry since Apollo — and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
The One Thing NASA Is Not Saying Loudly
There is an unresolved problem with the heat shield.
After the uncrewed Artemis I mission in November 2022, NASA engineers discovered unexpected erosion of Orion's ablative heat shield during atmospheric reentry. The charred material — which is supposed to burn away in a controlled manner — came off in larger, less predictable chunks than computer models predicted. Engineers believe they understand why, and they believe the Artemis II heat shield will survive reentry safely. But the heat shield on Artemis II is the original design. NASA is retooling the design for future capsules. The four humans flying tonight are doing so with a heat shield that previously showed unexpected behavior during the most dangerous minutes of any mission.
NBC News's investigation found that NASA decided to proceed after engineering analysis determined the risk remained within acceptable tolerances. "Within acceptable tolerances" is the language NASA uses when the numbers are good enough. It is not the language NASA uses when the numbers are comfortable.
The crew knows. They chose to go anyway.
The Program That Almost Died a Dozen Times
NASA's Artemis program has been running for nearly a decade and has cost approximately $44 billion to reach this moment. It is $20 billion over its original budget. It is years behind its original schedule. The Space Launch System rocket at the center of the program has been called the most expensive rocket ever built, costing approximately $4.1 billion per launch.
For comparison: SpaceX's Starship — which NASA also contracted to build the Artemis III lunar lander — has a stated target cost of under $10 million per launch. The gap between these numbers has been the central political argument against Artemis since 2020.
The program survived the Trump administration's first term, the Biden administration, and Trump's second term — though not without turbulence. The current NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman (the SpaceX Inspiration4 commander appointed by Trump in 2025), confirmed Artemis II's April 1 launch date only after a successful wet dress rehearsal was completed. He announced the target alongside five other possible launch windows running through April 6 and April 30, in case of scrubs.
Tonight is the first window. The weather is good. The rocket is ready.
Why 1972 Matters
The last humans to leave low Earth orbit were the crew of Apollo 17: Commander Gene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ron Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt. They launched December 7, 1972. Schmitt was the last to leave the lunar surface. Cernan, who died in 2017, was the last human to walk on the Moon. After their splashdown on December 19, 1972, no human being has traveled beyond low Earth orbit. In 53 years — nearly three generations — every astronaut who has flown has stayed within roughly 250 miles of Earth.
That changes tonight.
When Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen clear the Earth's gravity well and head toward the Moon, they will do something no living human has ever done. The youngest Apollo astronaut, Harrison Schmitt, is 90 years old. He is the only human alive who has stood on the lunar surface. Tonight, for the first time in his lifetime, he will not be alone in having traveled beyond Earth.
What This Flight Is Trying to Prove
Artemis II has three core objectives, in order of importance:
Prove Orion can keep people alive in deep space. Low Earth orbit has relatively predictable radiation, known thermal cycles, and close proximity to Earth for emergency return. Deep space has none of these. The crew will experience radiation levels and environmental conditions that cannot be fully simulated on the ground. Every system that keeps them alive — life support, thermal regulation, food and water systems — needs to work correctly for ten days without a rescue option.
Prove the free-return trajectory works with humans aboard. Artemis I verified the physics with a mannequin. Artemis II verifies that four humans can survive it physically and psychologically, that human reaction times and decision-making remain functional, and that no systems failure cascades in the specific conditions of a crewed deep-space flyby.
Provide political and programmatic momentum for Artemis III. The Moon landing cannot happen without the crewed flyby. The crewed flyby has to work for the political will and the funding to survive. NASA's budget is not guaranteed. The program has enemies in Congress and among commercial competitors. A successful Artemis II mission does not guarantee Artemis III. A failed one effectively ends it.
The World They're Launching Into
This is the 32nd day of the US-Iran war. Oil is at $118 a barrel. Gas prices in the United States have crossed $4 a gallon. The TSA is 87 days without pay. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively blockaded. Three NATO countries have been struck by errant Ukrainian drones. The IRGC has threatened 18 American tech companies.
Into this world, NASA is launching four astronauts to the Moon.
The contrast is not incidental. The Artemis program's framing has always been explicitly geopolitical: China is building its own lunar program, targeting a crewed Moon landing before 2030. If China plants its flag on the Moon before the United States returns, the symbolic and strategic implications are significant — perhaps not existential, but significant in the way that Sputnik was significant, which is to say: more significant than the political class realized at the time it happened.
Tonight's launch does not settle that competition. A flyby is not a landing. But it is the necessary precondition. Without Artemis II, there is no Artemis III. And Artemis III, if it lands in 2027 as planned, would be the first crewed lunar landing since 1972, the first by an American woman, and the first before China's own planned landing window.
Whether that matters depends on what you think the Moon is worth.
What Happens If It Works
If Artemis II succeeds — if all four astronauts come home safely after ten days — it validates the Orion spacecraft as a deep-space vehicle, confirms the heat shield is acceptable for crewed flights, and builds the political case for the $3–$4 billion needed to fund Artemis III.
Artemis III will land near the Moon's south pole — a region of permanent shadow that radar suggests contains water ice. Water on the Moon means drinking water, breathable oxygen, and hydrogen for rocket fuel. A sustained human presence on the Moon, the long-term goal of the Artemis program, depends on that ice being real and accessible.
Tonight is step one. The step that, after 53 years, someone finally has to take.
What Happens If It Doesn't
A catastrophic failure on Artemis II would effectively end American crewed deep-space exploration for a generation. The political will does not survive the loss of four astronauts on a Moon flight that critics already called too expensive and too risky. The Artemis program would almost certainly be canceled. SpaceX's Starship, already contracted as the Artemis III lunar lander, would carry on independently — but as a private venture, not a national program.
NASA believes the risk is acceptable. The crew agrees. The launch is tonight.