For the first time since 1972, human beings are going to the moon.
On Wednesday, April 1st, four astronauts (three American, one Canadian) will strap into NASA's Orion capsule atop the towering Space Launch System rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and begin a 10-day journey that will take them (literally) farther from Earth than any human has ever traveled. They won't land. Not yet. But they will swing around the moon and come back, a critical test flight that marks the beginning of something much bigger. The mission is called Artemis II.
The last time humans stood on lunar soil was December 1972, when Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walked the Taurus-Littrow valley. Since then, the moon has been the exclusive domain of robots.
Artemis II won't change that immediately. As we said, there's no landing planned. But it's the first crewed test in NASA's broader Artemis program, a flagship effort that has cost an estimated $93 billion since 2012 and aims to put astronauts back on the lunar surface by 2028, this time at the rugged and scientifically rich south pole.
The mission is also a strategic statement. China has made quiet but steady progress toward its own crewed lunar landing, targeting 2030. The US, the only country to have ever put humans on another world, is determined not to cede that ground.