You may recall that in 2022, Artemis I was an unmanned mission to the moon, a shakedown cruise of sorts for a NASA program that was finally putting into motion an announcement President George W. Bush had made in 2004. Our space program would shift its focus from the space shuttle program to completing the International Space Station and eventually returning to the moon as a step toward Mars, with Artemis II as a key milestone by returning humans to a lunar orbit around its far side.

Artemis II should launch tomorrow. It’s not exactly “Project Hail Mary,” but it’s exciting, nonetheless.

“It’s really the same program, with a little tweaking along the way, that we are trying to execute 22 years later,” said John Logsdon, a space policy historian and professor emeritus at George Washington University. While it’s “taken forever” in Logsdon’s opinion, there are still quite a few small steps to go before the giant leap and eventual goal of a permanent human presence on the moon.

The Artemis II itinerary is a 10-day mission, with day one spent in Earth orbit testing necessary life-support systems — including the bathroom (or, as NASA delicately puts it, “waste collection”). As William Harwood of CBS News explains, “All of the testing will be carried out while the spacecraft is close enough to get home quickly in the event of any major problems.”

Once that day of testing is complete, Artemis will fire its rockets twice more — once to establish a different test orbit, then, most importantly, the “translunar injection” that will speed them up and enable the craft to break free of Earth orbit on its way to the moon. But as Harwood points out, “The astronauts will not land on the moon or even go into lunar orbit, as the Apollo 8 crew did in their historic 1968 flight, which was the first to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit. Instead, the Artemis II crew will leave Earth on a ‘free return’ trajectory, flying around the leading edge of the moon and using lunar gravity to bend the ship’s path back toward Earth.”

Their path will take them farther than any human has ever gone from Earth, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

“During their lunar flyby, the astronauts will become the first humans to see some parts of the moon up close and in person,” reports NBC News. “NASA said the crew will spend most of the day taking photos and videos and recording observations.”

Once the astronauts splash down in the Pacific on day 10 of the mission, NASA will turn its attention to Artemis III, scheduled to lift off in 2027. While it was initially supposed to be the mission where mankind returned to the moon, NASA has lowered its sights in setting up Artemis III: “NASA’s Artemis III mission in low Earth orbit will test integrated operations between the Orion spacecraft and one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.” That will be part of the preparation for Artemis IV, scheduled to launch in 2028 and to bring four astronauts to the moon’s South Pole.

Part of the slowdown may have been due to heat shield issues that arose during the initial Artemis mission. However, after its 2024 investigation, NASA revealed, “While Artemis I was uncrewed, flight data showed that had crew been aboard, they would have been safe. The temperature data from the crew module systems inside the cabin were also well within limits and holding steady in the mid-70s Fahrenheit. Thermal performance of the heat shield exceeded expectations.” With that, the Artemis II mission became a go.

Speaking for the crew, Commander Reid Wiseman is upbeat about the history being made, including naming the spacecraft “Integrity.”

“Integrity just fit everything. You can be in integrity, and you can be out of integrity. And so for us, as the first crew of Artemis, we strive every day to be in integrity,” explained Wiseman. “We want everybody to be a part of this mission. There’s a lot of little things that will divide us. It’ll fill in the cracks and expand, if we let it. And it would be nice if this could just be some caulking, some reinforcement to fill in those spaces, to prevent division.”

Wiseman’s crew is quite diverse, as it turns out: pilot Victor Glover would be the first black man to view the moon close up, while mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen would be the first woman and Canadian, respectively, to reach that mark. However, with the exception of Hansen, all three have been on previous NASA missions to the International Space Station. And Hansen understands the risk. While he’s optimistic that the mission will be a success, he concedes, “I want everyone to understand that you can lose a crew. And if we do, that shouldn’t shock us. And the most important thing we do next is we stack the next rocket, and we’d let the next four volunteers get on top of it and go.”

The Artemis mission is a key milestone in returning mankind to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. However, just like the early days of our space program — which kicked off when the Russians reached space first with Sputnik — there’s a new urgency at NASA as China has announced its intention to land a man on the moon by 2030. “This time, the goal is not flags and footprints. This time, the goal is to stay,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “America will never again give up the moon.”

We talk about the man in the moon, but perhaps in the next decade, we will have men on the moon. Perhaps it will bring back the thrill of exploration my generation had when we were regularly out exploring our closest object in space, with the intriguing possibility of traveling beyond it in our children’s lifetimes.