NASA's 1st human moon mission in 50 years could be month out. What to know

NASA's 1st human moon mission in 50 years could be month out. What to know

Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY

Tue, January 6, 2026 at 4:59 PM UTC

5 min read

Four astronauts are on the verge of becoming the first humans to venture near the moon in more than half a century since NASA's iconic Apollo era came to an end.

As early as February, the crew of a mission known as Artemis 2 will board the U.S. space agency's Orion capsule atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket for a 10-day trip circumnavigating the moon.

The mission doesn't include plans for a moon landing – yet. Instead, the four astronauts will venture on a cosmic journey that will lay the groundwork for future astronauts to step foot on the lunar surface in the years ahead.

Why does NASA have a renewed interest in the moon decades since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to reach its surface? It's all part of a larger plan to reach Mars by establishing a permanent human lunar presence.

Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander captures its shadow on the moon's surface after completing a successful landing March 2 near a volcanic feature on the moon called Mons Latreille. The vehicle became the first of two landers manufactured by a U.S. company to reach the moon is 2025 in crucial missions to lay the groundwork for NASA to return humans to the lunar surface in the years ahead.

Athena, the lunar lander on Intuitive Machines' IM-2 mission, captured this image of the moon's surface with Earth seen in the distance ahead of a March 6 landing attempt. While the lander was the second U.S. vehicle to reach the moon within a week, it ultimately landed on its side, which hindered much of its mission.

NASA astronaut Suni Williams is helped out of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft March 18 following a return to Earth after a nine-month stay at the International Space Station. She and NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore crewed the Boeing Starliner, which had launched in June 2024 on a failed test flight that was meant to return them to Earth a few days later.

Butch Wilmore reacts after he and Suni Williams and two other astronauts splashed down March 18 in a Crew Dragon space capsule following their return to earth from the International Space Station off the coast of Florida. The astronauts' extended stay at the orbital outpost dominated the news cycle for months.

A SpaceX support team member is seen airborne while working to lift the SpaceX Dragon capsule that returned the Starliner astronauts and two others onto a recovery vehicle following its landing off the coast of Florida.

This picture shows the crew of a privately-funded mission known as Fram2, from left to right, mission specialist and medical officer Eric Philips, mission commander Chun Wang, pilot Rabea Rogge and vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen on March 19, 2025 in Hawthorne, California. Launched March 31 from Florida using a SpaceX Dragon capsule, the mission became t first ever human spaceflight over the Earth's polar regions.

Pop musician Katy Perry emerges April 14 from Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule in West Texas following a brief flight to the edge of space. Perry was part of an all-women crew that also included broadcast journalist Gayle King that took the ride from Blue Origin's facility called Launch Site One. The high-profile launch attracted plenty of headlines and even drew some backlash from those who viewed the mission as a wasteful publicity stunt.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket carrying astronauts Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Kerianne Flynn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, and Lauren Sanchez lifts off April 14 from Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas. Blue Origin has since launched five more human spaceflights on the New Shepard in 2025.

This photo depicts a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the latest batch of Amazon's broadband satellites on Dec. 16 to low-Earth orbit after launching from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Formerly called Project Kuiper, the venture has since been renamed Amazon Leo. Since its debut April launch, Amazon Leo has deployed 180 of 3,000 satellites planned for its first constellation, which could challenge SpaceX's Starlink.

A group of Blue Origin employees with their friends and families gather on the beach in Cape Canaveral for the launch of Blue Origin's second New Glenn rocket in 2025. Following its January debut, the rocket launched for the second time Nov. 13 from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on their trek to Mars.

Darkness falls Nov. 9 as a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is prepped for its second-ever launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin is developing the towering rocket for heavy-lift missions that could see Jeff Bezos' company compete with Elon Musk and SpaceX.

The SpaceX Starship spacecraft sits Oct. 12, 2025 atop the Super Heavy booster before sunrise as preparations continue for its 11th test flight from the company's complex in Starbase, Texas.

A SpaceX Super Heavy booster carrying the Starship spacecraft lifts off Oct. 13, 2025, on its 11th ever test flight at the company's launch pad in Starbase, Texas. The launch was Starship's fifth of 2025, and second consecutive successful test flight following a year that was early on marked by explosive failures. SpaceX is developing the rocket for future missions that would help NASA astronauts land on the moon and also potentially transport the first humans to Mars.

2025 spaceflight in photos. See images of Blue Origin, SpaceX missions

Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander captures its shadow on the moon's surface after completing a successful landing March 2 near a volcanic feature on the moon called Mons Latreille. The vehicle became the first of two landers manufactured by a U.S. company to reach the moon is 2025 in crucial missions to lay the groundwork for NASA to return humans to the lunar surface in the years ahead.

Here's everything to know about Artemis 2, and how the mission fits in with NASA's larger goals for space exploration.

Spaceflight in 2026: 6 spaceflights ahead, from NASA moon missions to SpaceX Starship

What are NASA's Artemis missions?

NASA's Artemis program is the agency's ambitious campaign to return Americans to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

In the years ahead, NASA's Artemis campaign aims to launch a series of crewed missions to establish a continuous human presence on the moon with a lunar settlement on the south pole. That's where water ice thought to be abundant in the region could be extracted and used for drinking, breathing and as a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

Why does NASA want to go to the moon?

Ultimately, Artemis reflects NASA's moon-to-Mars approach to getting the first humans to the Red Planet.

The lunar settlement – which includes plans for a nuclear reactor – would serve as a base of operations to make further crewed space missions, including trips to Mars, possible.

When was the last time Americans landed on the moon?

The last U.S. astronaut to land on the moon was on Dec. 19, 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission. All told, NASA astronauts have been to the moon on six separate Apollo missions, beginning with Apollo 11 in 1969.

What is Artemis 2? Orion capsule to take 4 astronauts around moon

The astronauts of Artemis II (from left) Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch leave crew quarters December 20, 2025 during their pre-launch rehearsal. Craig Bailey, FLORIDA TODAY via USA TODAY NETWORK

The crew of Artemis 2 are due to circle the moon on a 10-day trip.

The Orion capsule the crew will pilot – built by Lockheed Martin – is due to travel about 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the moon before returning to Earth. From that vantage, the astronauts should be able to see Earth and the moon from the capsule's windows – with our planet nearly a quarter-million miles away, according to NASA.

The planned trajectory for the four-day return journey will use Earth's gravity to naturally pull Orion back home after flying by the moon, negating the need for propulsion or much fuel.

When will Artemis 2 launch?

NASA's Artemis 2 mission could get off the ground as early as Feb. 6 and no later than April.

The mission would come more than three years after Artemis 1 launched Nov. 16, 2022, from the Kennedy Space Center, sending the Orion capsule on a moon orbiting mission without a crew in the first test of the vehicle. The Orion splashed down Dec. 11, 2022, in the Pacific Ocean.

Who are the Artemis 2 astronauts?

Artemis II NASA astronauts (left to right) Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen stand in the white room on the crew access arm of the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as part of an integrated ground systems test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023.

Here's a look at the four-member crew of Artemis 2:

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, a Baltimore native and the mission's commander who last flew to space in 2014 on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover, the pilot from Pomona, California, who flew to space in 2020 on a SpaceX mission to the space station.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, a mission specialist from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who holds several space agency records and who flew in 2019 on a Soyuz ISS mission.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, another mission specialist who will fly to space for the first time.

Koch and Glover represent the first woman and first African American, respectively, assigned to a NASA lunar mission. Additionally, Hansen is set to become the first Canadian to fly close to the moon, according to Reuters.

When would a moon landing happen?

While no moon landing is in store for the Artemis 2 astronauts, the mission serves a vital role in testing the systems and hardware on the spacecraft needed for future expeditions to the lunar surface.

The first of those could happen no earlier than 2027 with the much more ambitious Artemis 3 mission, which will return astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than half a century. President Donald Trump has signaled he wants to see the moon landing before the end of his second term in 2028.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope last observed come 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30, about four months after Hubble's first look at the interstellar comet. 3I/ATLAS became one of the biggest cosmic stories of the year when astronomers deemed it to be the third-ever discovered interstellar object in our solar system originating from an entirely different part of the galaxy.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on Oct. 2, 2025. At the time it was imaged, the comet was about 19 million miles from the spacecraft. The comet didn't come nearly as close to Earth, when it reached a distance of 170 million miles from our planet on Dec. 19.

This image shows the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet as a bright, fuzzy orb in the center. Traveling through our solar system at 130,000 miles per hour, 3I/ATLAS was made visible by using a series of colorized stacked images from Sept. 11-25, using the Heliocentric Imager-1 (H1) instrument, a visible-light imager on the STEREO-A (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft. The colorization was applied to differentiate the image from other observing spacecraft images.

Because it's big enough to be deemed a "city killer," asteroid 2024 YR4 became a source of alarm due to the uncommonly high risk it had of colliding with Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. For a time, it was the only object among more than 37,000 known large space rocks with any chance of hitting Earth anytime soon – with its probability of impact even rising to a record level of 3.1%.That began to change in late February as more precise observations allowed scientists to effectively winnow down the asteroid's odds of impact to a number so low, it might as well be zero.

An exoplanet known as K2-18b achieved a degree of fame in April when a team of astronomers claimed to have found in its atmosphere "the strongest evidence yet" that life exists anywhere else besides Earth. Other scientists have since cast doubt on the findings – putting a damper on the notion that humanity finally had proof that we aren't alone in the cosmos.

This artist's concept shows what exoplanet K2-18b could look like based on scientific data. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has observed K2-18b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, revealing conditions that could support life on the exoplanet.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is seen in a "selfie" that it took over on Sept. 10, 2021. Perseverance rover, along with Curiosity, is one of the agency's two car-sized robots exploring the Martian surface for signs that the planet was once habitable. And in September, NASA officials confirmed that one of the rovers’ finds contained a potential biosignature.

A reddish rock nicknamed "Cheyava Falls", with features resembling leopard spots was discovered by NASA's Perseverance rover in Mars’ Jezero Crater in July 2024, in this handout photograph released on September 10, 2025.

The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, light up the night sky Nov. 11 east of Denver, Colorado. A powerful geomagnetic solar storm in November blasted Earth and created the conditions necessary to reveal the auroras much further south in the United States than is typical.

A group of friends take photos of the northern lights Nov. 11 as they appear over Clinton Lake in Lawrence, Kansas. After NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center issued a "severe" geomagnetic storm watch in November, many people in the Northern Hemisphere, which includes the U.S., had an extraordinary opportunity to gaze upon some breathtaking red and green auroras in their own backyard.

In June, the state-of-the-art Vera C. Rubin ground telescope in Chile unveiled its first stunning images of the cosmos. This particular image combines 678 separate images taken by the observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth.

2025 was a year of cosmic discoveries. Here's a look back at 6

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope last observed come 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30, about four months after Hubble's first look at the interstellar comet. 3I/ATLAS became one of the biggest cosmic stories of the year when astronomers deemed it to be the third-ever discovered interstellar object in our solar system originating from an entirely different part of the galaxy.

Where will the Artemis missions launch?

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket can be see at the launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center in 2022 ahead of Artemis 1.

Both the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions will get off the ground from NASA's Kennedy Space Center along Florida's Space Coast near Cape Canaveral. The astronauts themselves will be aboard an Orion capsule that will hitch a ride out of Earth's atmosphere atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket, built by Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Artemis 2 will be the first time that the giant, 322-foot-tall SLS rocket and the Orion capsule will fly with humans aboard.

Contributing: Brooke Edwards, USA TODAY Network; Reuters

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA Artemis astronauts set to fly around moon in historic mission

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