Artemis II

pWotD Episode 3256: Artemis II Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 915,989 views on Wednesday, 1 April 2026 our article of the day is Artemis II.Artemis II is a lunar flyby mission under the Artemis program. Launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, the ten-day mission plans to carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. It is the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, and the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.The mission is expected to set several human spaceflight records. Glover became the first person of color, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-U. S. citizen to travel beyond low Earth orbit, and plan to become the first person of color, woman, and non-U. S. citizen to travel to the vicinity of the Moon. At a distance of approximately 4,700 miles (7,600 km; 4,100 nmi) beyond the Moon and an atmospheric reentry speed of about 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h), the mission would narrowly exceed previous crewed flight distance and speed.Artemis II is a flight test supporting subsequent Artemis missions, which are planned to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028 for the first time since Apollo 17. The mission was originally designated Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) and was initially intended to support the now-canceled Asteroid Redirect Mission, proposed in 2013. Its objectives were revised following the establishment of the Artemis program in 2017. The mission objectives are similar to those of Apollo 8 in 1968, the first crewed lunar flight during the Apollo program. However, its planned free-return trajectory more closely resembles that flown by Apollo 13.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 04:35 UTC on Thursday, 2 April 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Artemis II on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Kendra.