Artemis II to send four astronauts around the Moon on Orion test flight

Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed test flight in the Artemis campaign. Four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will fly aboard the Orion spacecraft to confirm systems operate as designed in the deep space environment.

The mission follows the uncrewed Artemis I flight test and will demonstrate a broad range of Space Launch System and Orion capabilities. After an initial launch similar to Artemis I, Orion and the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) will orbit Earth twice, with Orion’s orbit refined to a "safe" high Earth orbit of approximately 44,525 x 115 statute miles, before the ICPS is used as a target for a crew-conducted proximity operations demonstration monitored by mission controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Following that demonstration, the crew will verify life support, communications and navigation performance, then the Orion service module will perform a translunar injection burn to place the spacecraft on a free-return figure-eight trajectory more than 230,000 miles from Earth. Astronauts will evaluate systems, practice emergency procedures, test a radiation shelter, conduct experiments and make observations; the mission will travel about 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the Moon and then return for a Pacific Ocean splashdown and recovery with the help of the U.S.

Navy.

Key Topics

Science, Artemis Ii, Orion Spacecraft, Space Launch System, Icps, Reid Wiseman