CAMPAIGN
A REFERENCED FIELD GUIDE TO THE ARTEMIS PROGRAM
A long-form guide to the rocket, the capsule, the international agreement, and every numbered mission that make up Artemis — including the course correction NASA announced in February and March 2026. Every factual claim is numbered and sourced at the end, and every status statement is dated: this guide reflects NASA’s published plans as of 10 October 2026. Two instruments let you check the numbers yourself. Scroll to begin.
BEGIN — CHAPTER 01 →Four kinds of hardware, run by more than one organisation
Artemis is NASA’s umbrella name for returning humans to the Moon and eventually reaching Mars, built around four main pieces of hardware: the SLS rocket, the Orion crew capsule, commercially built Human Landing Systems, and lunar surface infrastructure.[1] Unlike Apollo, where NASA contracted aerospace firms to build to its own designs, Artemis leans on companies and international space agencies as genuine partners with their own stake in the outcome.[2]
The program’s logo shows an “A” bridging Earth and Moon, with a red line tracing the path spacecraft travel between them — a deliberate signal that the goal was never a rerun of Apollo, but a permanent, reusable presence.[2]
A non-binding agreement that keeps gaining signatories
The Artemis Accords were established on 13 October 2020, when the United States and seven other founding nations — Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the UAE and the UK — signed a non-binding set of principles that builds on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty for the era of crewed lunar return.[3]
The ten core principles include peaceful purposes only, public transparency about national plans, mutual emergency assistance, interoperable technical standards, and mitigation of orbital debris.[2] Signings have accelerated: 26 nations by June 2023,[4] 50 by December 2024,[5] 59 by October 2025[3] and 67 by the Lima workshop in May 2026.[6] Mauritius became the 70th on 17 July 2026[7] and Albania the 73rd on 21 September 2026.[8] As of 10 October 2026 the latest count NASA has announced is 76, after San Marino signed on 25 September 2026.[9]
Each dot below is a count NASA itself published, on the date it was reached. Pick any two of them to see how many nations joined in between and the average pace; nothing is projected forward.
Counts and dates from NASA releases [3]–[9]. Lines between dots are drawn flat until the next published count, because individual signing dates in between are not shown.
The only rocket that can do the whole job in one launch
NASA describes SLS as offering more payload mass, volume, and departure energy than any other single rocket flying today, and as the only vehicle currently able to send Orion, astronauts, and cargo directly to the Moon in a single launch.[1] It forms, together with Orion, the backbone of every crewed Artemis mission flown so far. In February 2026 NASA said it would standardize SLS from Artemis IV: the interim upper stage used on the first missions is to be replaced by a new second stage (options still being assessed), and NASA no longer plans to use the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage or a second mobile launcher, both of which had been delayed.[10][11]
Built to carry, sustain, and bring a crew home
Orion is the exploration vehicle that carries and sustains the crew on Artemis missions and returns them safely to Earth, launching atop SLS on every crewed flight.[12] Select a component.
November 2022 — no crew, but every system tested for one
Artemis I sent an uncrewed Orion around the Moon and back, validating the SLS rocket and Orion’s heat shield under real re-entry conditions before any astronaut would fly aboard them.[2] The heat shield came back with more char loss than expected; how that was handled for the crewed flight is in the next chapter, and the physics of it in ENTRY.
Farther from Earth than any human before
Artemis II launched at 6:35 p.m. EDT on 1 April 2026 from Launch Pad 39B, carrying NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch, with CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen — the first crewed flight of both Orion and SLS.[13] On 6 April, at 12:56 p.m. CDT, the crew passed Apollo 13’s 1970 record of 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth; they swung 4,067 miles (6,545 km) above the lunar surface and reached about 252,756 miles (406,771 km) — farther from Earth than any humans before them.[14]
Orion splashed down off San Diego at 5:07 p.m. PDT on 10 April 2026, after nearly ten days and 695,081 miles (about 1.12 million km) flown.[13] After the Artemis I heat-shield findings, NASA had decided in December 2024 to fly the existing heat shield with changes to Orion’s trajectory as it enters the atmosphere;[15] first inspections after splashdown found char loss far smaller than on Artemis I, with detailed analysis continuing.[16]
Slide the spacecraft out from Earth or pick a marker. The page converts the distance (1 mile = 1.609344 km exactly), compares it with the Moon’s average distance and the two records, and computes how long a radio signal takes each way at the speed of light.
Linear scale from Earth’s centre, 0–420,000 km. Moon: mean distance 384,400 km [17]. Records: Apollo 13 248,655 mi and Artemis II about 252,756 mi [14]. Light speed 299,792.458 km/s, exact [18]; mile 1.609344 km, exact [19]. NASA does not state whether its record distances are measured from Earth’s centre or surface (a difference of about 6,371 km). Light time is for the straight-line distance; the real link also passes through ground-station and relay equipment.
Rebuilding the sequence around a lander that wasn't ready
On 27 February 2026 NASA announced that it would fly Artemis missions more often, standardize SLS, and add a new crewed mission in 2027 to test systems in Earth orbit before landing: Artemis III became a low-Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking test with one or both commercial landers, and Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028, became the first landing.[10] On 24 March 2026 NASA said it intends to pause Gateway “in its current form” and shift to infrastructure for sustained surface operations — a Moon Base — repurposing applicable equipment.[20] NASA’s Inspector General counts four Artemis systems NASA has announced plans to cancel or repurpose — the Exploration Upper Stage, its Universal Stage Adapter, Mobile Launcher 2 and Gateway’s HALO module — with a combined current contract value of $5.9 billion.[11]
A four-person crew, two competing landers, one rehearsal
As redefined, Artemis III will launch four astronauts on SLS and Orion to low Earth orbit, where Orion’s European service module circularizes the orbit; Orion then docks with a test version of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 for about two days, and afterwards with a SpaceX Starship pathfinder for about a day, before returning to a Pacific splashdown after roughly two weeks.[21][22] On 9 June 2026 NASA named the crew — Randy Bresnik (commander), ESA’s Luca Parmitano (pilot), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio — and targeted the flight for 2027; a spacer replaces the upper stage, which an Earth-orbit mission does not need.[22]
Now the first landing since Apollo 17
Under the revised sequence, Artemis IV is planned as the first crewed Moon landing since Apollo 17 and the first crewed mission to the lunar south pole, targeted for early 2028 — the title Artemis III originally held.[10][22] The crewed flights to the surface then follow the cadence in Chapter 12. For how Apollo did it, see TRANQUILITY.
Two competing designs, deliberately, not one
Artemis funds two Human Landing System providers — SpaceX’s Starship HLS and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. NASA says lander readiness will decide which one carries the first crew down.[10] As of 10 October 2026, neither has carried people; Artemis III is designed to test both in Earth orbit first, with crews entering at least one lander test article if decisions still pending allow it.[21] Starship’s booster recovery and reuse are covered in RETURN.
A station redirected before it ever flew
Gateway, the planned lunar-orbit station, was to be the staging point for landings. In April 2026 NASA issued a stop-work order on its HALO habitation module, whose contract had grown to $1.9 billion while the builder worked to fix corrosion in the primary structure; as of the Inspector General’s June 2026 memo, decisions on reusing the hardware were not final.[11] In August 2026 NASA said power and avionics hardware developed for HALO is being repurposed for Northrop Grumman technology payloads bound for the lunar surface.[23] The full story is in HALO; the surface base it gave way to is in HORIZON.
A plan measured in months, not a legacy yet
Artemis is still in progress, so this guide ends with NASA’s stated plan rather than a legacy chapter. As of 10 October 2026: Artemis III in 2027 tests the landers in Earth orbit; Artemis IV targets the first south-pole landing in early 2028; Artemis V follows in late 2028, when NASA expects to begin building its Moon Base.[10] NASA’s February plan foresaw about one mission a year after that; its March plan says it is initially targeting crewed landings every six months beyond Artemis V, with up to 30 robotic landings starting in 2027.[20] Commercial cargo landers for the first Moon Base phase, which runs through 2029, are being prepared now.[23]
How the cadence fits together: SLS and Orion carry the crew from Earth (see THRUST for the last time a rocket did this job alone), a commercial lander does the descent and ascent, and Orion brings the crew home through the atmosphere (ENTRY).
Sources cited throughout this guide
Bracketed numbers in the text above correspond to the sources below. Every URL was checked on 10–11 October 2026.