Humans Are Going Back to the Moon

The last time a human being saw the Moon up close was December 1972. Three astronauts aboard Apollo 17 orbited, landed, drove a buggy across the surface, collected rocks, and came home. Then we stopped going. For fifty-three years, no human has left low Earth orbit.

That’s about to change.

What Artemis II will do

Artemis II is a ten-day mission that will send four astronauts around the Moon and back. They won’t land. Instead, they’ll fly past it, loop behind it (briefly losing all contact with Earth), and swing back home, travelling further from our planet than anyone in history. The previous record was set by Apollo 13 in 1970, when their emergency trajectory carried them 400,171 kilometres from Earth. Artemis II will go further.

The crew: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, alongside Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Glover will become the first Black astronaut to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Koch will become the first woman. Hansen will become the first non-American. After fifty-three years of nobody going, three records will be broken in a single flight.

The spacecraft, Orion, will launch on the Space Launch System, currently the most powerful rocket in operation. In early 2026, NASA completed a fuelling test at Kennedy Space Center and provided updates on final preparations.

Why it took fifty years

Apollo was a sprint, not a marathon. It was driven by Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and funded at extraordinary levels: NASA’s budget peaked at about 4.4% of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1966, compared to less than 0.5% today. Once the political goal of beating the Soviets to the Moon was met, the money and the will evaporated almost overnight.

Artemis is built on a different logic. The programme’s aim isn’t just planting a flag. It’s sustained presence: repeated visits, a lunar orbiting station called Gateway, and eventually a permanent base near the south pole. That kind of infrastructure takes far longer to build than a single dramatic landing. But the idea is that this time, when we go, we stay.

What comes next

If Artemis II succeeds, Artemis III will attempt the first crewed landing since 1972, using a modified version of SpaceX’s Starship as the landing vehicle, targeting the lunar south pole.

And it’s not just NASA. China’s Chang’e 7 mission will send an orbiter, lander, rover, and flying probe to the south pole in late 2026. Blue Origin is planning an uncrewed Moon lander test. The Artemis Accords have been signed by over 60 countries. The Moon is becoming a destination again, not just for one nation sprinting to get there first, but for a broader effort to actually use it.

Meanwhile, as we covered in a recent post, new research shows the Moon is still shrinking and experiencing moonquakes. The south pole regions where everyone wants to land are laced with young geological faults. The challenge isn’t just getting there. It’s building for a world that’s still geologically active.

Talking about this with your kids

The last people to visit the Moon went before your grandparents might have been born. Now four astronauts are going to fly around it, further from home than any person in history. Try this with your kids: find the Moon tonight and point at it. Tell them that four people are about to fly there and back, and ask what they’d want to look at first: the Earth getting smaller, or the Moon getting bigger.

For fifty-three years, the Moon has been a place we only looked at. That chapter is closing. The next one starts with four people, a spacecraft called Orion, and the longest trip home any human has ever taken.

Sources and further reading

NASA Artemis II overview: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii

NASA 2026 news releases: https://www.nasa.gov/news/all-news

Scientific American: Most Exciting Space Events for 2026: https://www.scientificamerican.com

Planetary Society 2026 calendar: https://www.planetary.org