Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis program and will send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—on a lunar flyby and return to Earth. The flight is designed as a crewed test of the Orion spacecraft and associated mission systems following the uncrewed Artemis I mission.

Key objectives include validating Orion’s crew life support and operational readiness in deep-space conditions, performing in-flight checkouts and crew procedures, and executing a lunar free-return trajectory before Earth reentry and ocean recovery. The mission also incorporates international contributions, including the European Service Module that provides propulsion, power, and consumables for Orion.

Along with the four crew members, four CubeSats will ride along as secondary payloads:
- TACHELES from the German space agency DLR
- ATENEA from Argentina’s space agency CONAE
- K-RadCube from the Korea AeroSpace Administration
- Space Weather CubeSat-1 from the Saudi Space Agency

The launch date is currently targeted for Saturday, February 7, 2026 at 2:41 AM (UTC).