Artemis II

Liftoff Time

No Earlier Than February, 2026

Watch Livestream

24/7 Coverage

Mission Details

Launch Notes

First crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft. First time humans will go beyond Low Earth Orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis II

Wiki

Artemis II mission plan is to send four astronauts in the first crewed Orion capsule into a lunar free return trajectory for a 10 day mission. The mission will include the first non-American, Canadian specifically, and likely the first woman to leave low earth orbit. Because of the hydrogen boil-off due to the increased time spent in a LEO parking orbit compared to Artemis I, the mission will use a multi-translunar injection (MTLI), or multiple departure burns to preform the translunar injection burn. The burn will be partially completed by the ICPS 2nd stage before being fully completed by the European Service Module (ESM) on the following orbit. It was planned to include several cubesats in the adapter between Orion and the ICPS second stage, similar to Artemis I. However, no official announcement was ever made regarding these satellites, and it is unclear if they will be included.

High Earth Orbit

1 Payload

Rocket

Active
SLS Block 1

Active Since 2022

National Aeronautics and Space Administration logo

Agency

NASA

Price

$876.00 million

Rocket

Height: 98.1m

Payload to Orbit

LEO: 95,000 kg

Liftoff Thrust

39,440 Kilonewtons

Fairing

Diameter: 5.1m

Height: 14.3m

Stages

2

Strap-ons

2

Launch Site

LC-39B

Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA

Fastest Turnaround

28 days 11 hours