Artemis II, the international space race, and what is at stake for the U.S.

Explore the significance of NASA's Artemis II mission in the U.S.-China space race and its implications for lunar exploration.

The NASA Artemis II mission is set to launch no earlier than April 1, 2026. If the lift-off is successful, the giant rocket will send humans to near the moon for the first time in more than half a century. In so doing, it will make an important milestone for the U.S. space programme. Its crew — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will also become the first humans to travel beyond low-earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. Glover will also become the first person of colour, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-U.S. citizen to embark on a lunar trajectory.

The Artemis II mission uses the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the crew capsule is called Orion. The SLS will propel Orion into a free-return trajectory around the far side of the moon, reaching around 7,500 km from the moon’s surface before the earth’s gravity pulls them back to splash down in the Pacific Ocean in a little over a week.

The mission does not plan to land on the moon. Instead, NASA is flying it to prove that the whole system — from the ground teams to the rocket and its crew — works as designed and the processes to land humans on the moon are ready.

After the SLS core stage is separated, the crew will spend 24 hours in a high orbit around the earth as it checks the capsule’s life-support and environment systems. If they’re all in order, they will fire Orion’s trans-lunar injection burn. The crew will also test manual piloting and proximity operations, communications and navigation systems, and a high-speed data relay and collect data about physiological and biological responses of the human body to deep-space travel.

Once Orion has finished going around the moon, it will be pulled towards the earth by gravity. NASA engineers expect the capsule will enter the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of around 40,000 km/hr. Its 5-metre-wide heat shield will endure temperatures as high as 5,000 C.

NASA will be collecting important data at this time because during the Artemis I mission in 2022, engineers found that Orion’s heat shield was eroded during re-entry as gases trapped in the shield’s material cracked it. In response, NASA used the same material but this time modified the re-entry trajectory so that Orion spends less time in the atmosphere as it descends.