That lunar flyby mission carrying four astronauts is set for launch in April 2026. It's a flight test mission that will pave the way for landing the first woman and the next man on the moon.
Onboard will be Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.
Wiseman, Glover and Koch are NASA astronauts. Hansen is from the Canadian Space Agency.
NASA said in a statement, "Astronauts on their first flight aboard NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will venture around the moon. Their mission will be to confirm all of the spacecraft's systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space."
According to Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin, Artemis II builds on the uncrewed Artemis I flight test.
"This mission will prove Orion's critical life support systems are ready to sustain our astronauts on longer duration missions ahead and allow the crew to practice operations essential to the success of Artemis III," Sarafin said in a statement.
NASA said that, during the flyby mission, the Artemis II crew "will take the controls of the Orion spacecraft and periodically fly it manually during the flight around the moon and back."
The Artemis mission hit a milestone in January in the assembly of the rocket with the stacking of the twin booster's right forward segment at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The forward segments of the Artemis II boosters are comprised of three parts, an avionics housing forward skirt, a frustum housing motors and an aerodynamic nose cone fairing.
The twin solid rocket booster assembly is 177 feet tall.
While originally planned to launch in September of this year, the Artemis II moon flyby crewed mission is currently set to launch in April 2026.
Artemis III, the crewed moon landing, is scheduled to launch in mid-2027.
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