NASA Artemis Program Timeline 2026: Missions, Dates & Latest News

Last updated: November 1, 2026.

The NASA Artemis program timeline is the roadmap for humanity’s return to the Moon — and the first step toward Mars. More than 50 years after Apollo, NASA is sending crews back into deep space: first around the Moon, then to dock with commercial landers in Earth orbit, and finally to land astronauts near the lunar south pole.

In February 2026, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman reshaped the program: Artemis III is now a crewed Earth-orbit test flight (2027) instead of the first landing, while Artemis IV (early 2028) and Artemis V (late 2028) will carry crews to the lunar surface. Here is where every Artemis mission stands today.

Artemis Missions at a Glance

Follow every upcoming launch on our rocket launch schedule.

Artemis I: The Uncrewed Test Flight (2022)

Artemis I lifted off on November 16, 2022, after launch scrubs caused by engine-cooling issues and hydrogen leaks. The uncrewed Orion capsule spent 25.5 days in space, traveling 268,563 miles from Earth and spending a week in a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California on December 11.

Atop the SLS sat the Orion capsule: a crew module for the astronauts, a European-built service module supplying power, propulsion, and consumables, and a launch abort system tower. The SLS itself uses two solid rocket boosters derived from the Space Shuttle, a core stage powered by four RS-25 engines, and a cryogenic upper stage — a configuration standardized across all Artemis flights to keep the program flying on a steady cadence.

Artemis II: First Crewed Lunar Flyby Since 1972 (April 2026)

On April 1, 2026, at 6:35 p.m. ET, the SLS rocket roared off Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center carrying the first crew to leave low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 — after a first launch attempt was scrubbed in February. The Orion spacecraft carried four astronauts on a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute voyage of more than a million miles, swinging around the far side of the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on April 10.

At its farthest point, the crew reached 252,756 miles from Earth — the greatest distance humans have ever traveled from home, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

The Artemis II crew:

• Commander Reid Wiseman (NASA) — Naval aviator and test pilot who previously flew to the International Space Station on Expedition 40/41 in 2014
• Pilot Victor Glover (NASA) — Navy commander and test pilot who piloted SpaceX Crew-1, becoming the first Black astronaut to serve on a long-duration ISS mission
• Mission Specialist Christina Koch (NASA) — Engineer who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman (328 days aboard the ISS)
• Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen (Canadian Space Agency) — Royal Canadian Air Force colonel and fighter pilot; the first Canadian Space Agency astronaut to travel to the Moon

The mission validated Orion’s life support, navigation, communications, and high-speed Earth reentry with crew aboard. In October 2026, NASA engineering analysis confirmed Orion’s heat shield performed as expected on the flight, with significantly less cracking and char loss than on Artemis I. It also marked several historic firsts:

• The first crewed Orion mission
• The first human lunar flyby in over 50 years
• The first deep-space mission to include a woman and a person of color
• The first Canadian astronaut to travel around the Moon

In September 2026, Wiseman and Glover were named NASA emeritus astronauts and will advise the Artemis III team on Orion operations and deep-space flight experience.

Trajectory map: NASA

The 2026 Restructure: Why Artemis III Changed

In February 2026, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a major reshaping of the Artemis program. Instead of jumping straight from a lunar flyby to a lunar landing, NASA inserted a dedicated risk-reduction step — an Apollo 9-style “test before you land” step. The key changes:

• Artemis III is now a crewed low-Earth-orbit mission that will test rendezvous and docking between Orion and test versions of the commercial human landing systems — SpaceX’s Starship HLS and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — along with the EVA suits astronauts will wear on the lunar surface. For the full story of the change, see why Artemis III won’t land on the Moon anymore — the new plan explained. NASA then laid out the mission in detail at its October acceleration briefing — here is NASA’s three-rocket Artemis III flight plan from the October briefing.
• SLS was standardized: the upgraded Block 1B upper stage was dropped in favor of a single SLS configuration to enable serial production and a launch cadence as short as ten months.
• The first crewed lunar landings moved to Artemis IV (early 2028) and Artemis V (late 2028) — two landings in a single year — while the overall goal of returning astronauts to the Moon in 2028 stayed the same.
• Beyond Artemis V, NASA is pursuing dual, lower-cost commercial landing pathways to enable more frequent and economical missions.

Artemis III: Crew, Launch Date & Mission Profile (2027)

NASA announced the Artemis III crew on June 9, 2026:

• Commander Randy Bresnik (NASA) — Marine Corps test pilot and former International Space Station commander
• Pilot Luca Parmitano (European Space Agency) — Italian astronaut with two long-duration ISS missions
• Mission Specialist Frank Rubio (NASA) — U.S. Army colonel, flight surgeon, and holder of the U.S. record for longest single spaceflight (371 days)
• Mission Specialist Andre Douglas (NASA) — Navy veteran and mechanical engineer making his first spaceflight; previously an alternate for the Artemis II crew

NASA astronaut Bob Hines is training as the crew’s backup.

Mission profile: Artemis III is a three-rocket campaign. Blue Origin will launch a Blue Moon Mark 2 test lander on a New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36A first — it can wait in orbit for up to a month. The crew then launches aboard SLS and Orion from Launch Complex 39B, and on day three Orion docks with Blue Moon; the astronauts will go aboard to test its life-support systems and controls. Next, SpaceX launches a Starship test lander from Launch Complex 39A, and on day eight Orion docks with the Starship’s nose for about two hours — a docking-only test, with no crew transfer into Starship. Across the 14-day flight, the crew will also run Orion systems and spacesuit evaluations, human research, and technology demonstrations — the first time either lander operates alongside a crewed Orion.

Isaacman added detail in a November 1, 2026 interview with NASASpaceflight: the launch order is a hard dependency, not just a sequence. Blue Moon must be in orbit and checked out before NASA commits SLS and the crew, because the Blue Moon visit is where most of the mission’s operational learning will happen — it is Blue Origin’s first spacecraft designed to keep people alive beyond suborbital flight. Starship’s role is supporting: docking practice, controllability testing, and imagery. Isaacman also called the lander the program’s main schedule bottleneck — Blue Origin has no fully assembled test article yet — and said NASA would accept roughly a month of slip if it produced more learning from the Blue Moon checkout.

Launch date: NASA is targeting summer 2027 — our Artemis III launch page currently lists June 30, 2027 — for a 14-day mission. At NASA’s Artemis Acceleration press conference on October 23, 2026, agency leaders said the mission remains on track for that summer window. Hardware is moving: Orion’s crew and service modules were joined on July 30, 2026, and stacking of the SLS solid rocket boosters began on September 17, 2026. The crew has already toured the Starship launch tower at Kennedy Space Center as part of lander familiarization. Background: why Artemis III won’t land on the Moon anymore.

Artemis IV & V: Return to the Lunar Surface (2028)

Artemis IV (early 2028) is now NASA’s planned first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972, targeting the Moon’s south pole region, where water ice could support long-duration stays. Artemis V (late 2028) would follow with a second landing the same year.

Both missions depend on the commercial landers proven during Artemis III. SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System faces a packed 2027: a ship-to-ship propellant-transfer demonstration in early 2027, uncrewed tanker demo flights in the third quarter, and an uncrewed lunar landing attempt late in the year. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander flies to the Moon in 2027, with an uncrewed Mark 2 landing attempt targeted for early 2028. NASA has not yet decided which lander will carry the Artemis IV crew — Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed at the October 23, 2026 briefing that the call is still open.

Beyond the Landings: Moon Base and Mars

NASA’s longer-term plan, outlined in the agency’s Moon Base “Ignition” framework in September 2026, builds a permanent lunar presence in three phases: robotic landings and site characterization through 2029, power, cargo, and communications infrastructure from 2029 to 2032, and extended human operations from 2032 onward — all centered on the lunar south pole. The Lunar Gateway station remains part of NASA’s deep-space architecture, and everything Artemis learns about living and working on the Moon feeds directly into the eventual goal: sending astronauts to Mars.