Fifty-two years after the final Apollo mission departed the Moon’s vicinity, NASA’s groundbreaking Artemis program is on the cusp of a new era of human lunar exploration, with four international astronauts approaching the historic milestone of the first crewed lunar flyby since 1972. The four-person crew — mission commander Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover of the United States, and Jeremy Hansen representing the Canadian Space Agency — is closing in on the moment when lunar gravity will capture the Orion capsule’s trajectory, slinging it into a loop around the Moon that marks a turning point for modern deep-space human spaceflight.
This mission is packed with unprecedented firsts that expand the face of space exploration. Koch will make history as the first woman to fly around the Moon, while Glover, a Black astronaut, will go down in textbooks as the first person of color to complete a lunar flyby. For Hansen, the mission cements his place as the first non-American astronaut to accomplish the feat. The mission’s core objectives stretch far beyond symbolic milestones, however: during their planned flyby on Monday, the crew will spend hours documenting lunar surface features, collecting critical data that will lay the groundwork for future crewed lunar landings.
Days ahead of the planned flyby, the crew has already achieved a first in observational astronomy. Early Sunday, NASA released a new image captured by the Artemis crew showing the massive Orientale basin on the Moon’s far side, marking the first time human eyes have ever viewed the entire sprawling crater directly. The bullseye-shaped impact crater, often called the Moon’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon, had only ever been photographed by robotic orbital cameras before this mission. Speaking in a live question-and-answer session with Canadian schoolchildren from space, Koch described the crew’s excitement at the unprecedented view. “It’s very distinctive and no human eyes previously had seen this crater until today, really, when we were privileged enough to see it,” she said.
As the capsule swings around the far side of the Moon near the end of the flyby, the crew will also get a rare front-row seat to a deep-space solar eclipse, where the Moon will pass directly between the Orion capsule and the Sun, leaving only the Sun’s wispy outer corona visible. In addition to observational work, the mission carries a critical engineering mandate: the astronauts are the first to test NASA’s new Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS) spacesuits in the actual space environment. The bright orange suits, designed to protect the crew during launch and atmospheric reentry, can also provide up to six days of breathable air in an emergency scenario. The crew will run through functional tests to assess how quickly they can don and pressurize the suits, gathering real-world performance data that cannot be replicated in ground simulations.
While the Artemis II crew will not land on the lunar surface itself, they are on track to break a 50-plus-year-old record: they will travel farther from Earth than any human in history. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined the mission’s broader significance in a televised interview with CNN on Sunday, noting that the data collected on this flight is irreplaceable for upcoming Artemis missions. Over the coming day, while the crew operates on the far side of the Moon out of direct communication with Earth, they will eclipse the previous distance record, and engineers will collect vital performance data on Orion’s systems. “This is the first time astronauts have ever flown on this spacecraft before,” Isaacman said. “That’s what we’re most interested in getting data from.”
As of Sunday, the crew had already completed a successful manual piloting demonstration and walked through their full flyby plan, reviewing all lunar surface features scheduled for analysis and photography. The data collected during this mission will be critical to preparing for Artemis III, the first crewed lunar landing scheduled for 2027, and the subsequent landing mission Artemis IV planned for 2028, Isaacman added. “The information will be pretty paramount to set up for subsequent missions,” he said, emphasizing that Artemis II is far more than a demonstration flight — it is the foundational step for NASA’s long-term goal of establishing a sustained human presence on and around the Moon.