Artemis II Mission Schedule From Launch to Splashdown as of April 2, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026, and follows a roughly 10 day lunar free-return profile.
• The mission spends about a day near Earth before Orion departs for a four day trip to the Moon.
• Return on April 10 is planned to end with Pacific splashdown, Navy recovery, and postflight checks.

Mission Status on April 2, 2026

As of April 2, 2026, Artemis II is no longer a paper mission, a rehearsal date, or a shifting campaign target. NASA launched the mission from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen aboard Orion on an approximately 10 day mission around the Moon and back. By the morning of April 2, Orion had already completed its perigee raise burn and was in the high Earth orbit that sets up the departure toward the Moon. NASA scheduled the translunar injection burn for 7:49 p.m. EDT on April 2, pending approval from the mission management team, and the agency’s current public schedule still points to a planned Pacific splashdown at 8:06 p.m. EDT on April 10.

That matters because any schedule written on April 2 has to separate two kinds of time. The first is fixed and already behind the crew: launch, ascent, initial orbit, spacecraft deployment, and the move into high Earth orbit. The second is still prospective: the translunar injection burn, the outbound correction burns, the lunar flyby on April 6, the return correction burns, and the last sequence from service module separation to splashdown. NASA has published a detailed mission timeline, a daily agenda, a launch-specific coverage schedule, and live flight updates, so the schedule below can be presented with a clean division between completed events and planned events rather than pretending the entire mission is already history.

What This Flight Is Actually Built To Do

The public image of Artemis II is easy to describe. Four astronauts fly around the Moon and come home. The operational design is more interesting. This mission is the first crewed flight of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the first crewed launch of the Space Launch System and Orion combination, and the first time humans have been sent around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Its trajectory is a free-return loop, which means Orion uses the geometry of the Earth-Moon system so that lunar gravity bends the spacecraft back toward Earth rather than forcing a large propulsive burn to begin the return. NASA’s Artemis II press kit and mission overview describe the flight as a loop out from Earth, around the far side of the Moon, and back home, with slight variations tied to the exact launch timing.

That design shapes the schedule from the first orbit onward. Artemis II does not fire straight out of Earth orbit in the old Apollo program style. Orion first spends time in elliptical and then high Earth orbit while the crew checks spacecraft systems, rehearses manual handling, verifies communications and navigation performance, and practices proximity operations with the spent Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. Only after those tasks are completed does Orion’s European Service Module provide the departure burn that sends the crew toward the Moon. The result is a schedule that looks less like a sightseeing itinerary and more like a staged exam in which every early block of time exists to clear the next block.

Countdown and Launch Day

The hours before liftoff

The final launch window on April 1 opened at 6:24 p.m. EDT and lasted two hours. NASA’s countdown coverage and launch day updates show that the launch team spent launch morning loading supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into the SLS core stage and the ICPS. The crew arrived at the pad in the afternoon, boarded Orion, completed communications checks, and went through suit leak checks and hatch closeout work. During those last hours, teams were not dealing with abstract risk. They were working through actual launch day conditions, including a sensor reading on the launch abort system attitude control motor controller battery that engineers judged to be an instrumentation issue rather than a flight threat.

The schedule slipped, but only slightly. NASA extended the T-10 minute hold to finish final preparations, then resumed the count for a new liftoff time of 6:35 p.m. EDT. That small hold is the sort of launch day friction that often disappears in popular retellings, yet it says a lot about how the mission was managed. Artemis II did not leave the pad because the calendar said it should. It left because the team used the available window, confirmed the vehicle was ready, and launched inside the margin built into the timeline.

The first eight minutes

Once the boosters lit, the schedule tightened into seconds. According to NASA’s launch day timeline and live launch updates, SLS cleared the tower and began its roll and pitch maneuver at mission elapsed time plus seven seconds. The rocket reached supersonic speed at plus 56 seconds and passed through maximum dynamic pressure at plus 1 minute 12 seconds. The twin solid rocket boosters separated at plus 2 minutes 9 seconds. The launch abort system jettisoned at plus 3 minutes 13 seconds, once Orion was high enough that it no longer needed that emergency tower. Core stage main engine cutoff came at plus 8 minutes 2 seconds, followed by core stage separation at plus 8 minutes 14 seconds.

Those milestones are familiar in outline to anyone who has followed launch profiles, but Artemis II attached human consequences to each one. The ascent was the first time people had ridden the four RS-25 engines and twin five-segment boosters of SLS. Wiseman and Glover, seated as commander and pilot, were the crew members primarily positioned to handle manual piloting and display interaction during ascent and entry if needed. Koch and Hansen, sitting in the mission specialist seats, were part of the monitoring chain that turned an automated launch into a crewed spacecraft mission rather than a one-way injection to orbit. NASA’s crew roles infographic lays out those responsibilities in detail.

Launch evening in orbit

After ascent, the mission did not head for the Moon immediately. NASA’s launch release stated that about 49 minutes into the test flight, the upper stage fired to place Orion into an elliptical orbit around Earth. A second planned burn by the stage would then push Orion into a high Earth orbit extending about 46,000 miles beyond Earth, after which Orion would separate and operate independently. During that period the crew named the spacecraft Integrity and began the shift from launch mode to flight operations.

By 6:59 p.m. EDT on launch day, NASA confirmed that all four Orion solar array wings had fully deployed. That was one of the first visible signs that the spacecraft had made the transition from stacked rocket payload to self-sustaining deep space vehicle. The schedule then moved into a quieter but more revealing segment, because the crew’s first real work in space was not a spectacular burn toward the Moon. It was a set of checkouts and configuration changes that had to prove Orion could live as a spacecraft before it tried to travel as one.

Flight Day 1 Near Earth

NASA’s Artemis II press kit describes Orion’s early Earth orbit in unusually concrete terms. The spacecraft begins in an elliptical orbit that is refined to a safe high Earth orbit of approximately 44,525 by 115 statute miles. That is a very different operating environment from the International Space Station, which circles Earth at roughly 250 miles altitude in a nearly circular orbit. Artemis II is still close to home during this part of the mission, but it is already moving outside the communication and navigation habits that govern low Earth orbit operations. NASA planned an early checkout of the Deep Space Network precisely because Orion would briefly move beyond the range of GPS satellites and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system while still in this Earth-centered phase.

Flight Day 1 is also where one of the most Artemis-specific demonstrations takes place. After the burn into high Earth orbit, Orion separates from the ICPS and uses it as a target for a manual proximity operations demonstration. This is not a theatrical add-on. NASA has been explicit in its press kit and mission overview materials that the exercise is meant to gather performance data and operating experience for rendezvous, proximity operations, docking, and undocking work that future Artemis missions will need in lunar orbit. In practice, that means the astronauts transition Orion to manual mode, fly relative to the stage, and validate how the spacecraft behaves when people rather than ground algorithms are directly shaping the motion.

The crew’s first full rest cycle is broken in two because the schedule is built around geometry, not comfort. NASA’s daily agenda says the astronauts sleep for about four hours, wake for an additional engine firing that places Orion into the proper orbital geometry for translunar injection, perform a brief Deep Space Network emergency communications checkout, and then return to sleep for another four and a half hours. On the morning of April 2, NASA reported that the crew was awakened at 7:06 a.m. EDT and monitored a 43 second firing of the service module main engine, the perigee raise burn, which raised the low point of Orion’s orbit and refined the trajectory for departure toward the Moon.

The Crew Roles That Matter to the Schedule

Mission schedules often read as if the spacecraft is the only actor. Artemis II’s internal work assignment is more specific than that. Wiseman, as commander, is the primary communicator with Mission Control Center, and shares with Glover the manual piloting and display handling load during ascent and entry. Glover, as pilot, is responsible for executing spacecraft maneuvers and stands second in command. That pairing matters most during launch, entry, manual proximity operations, and the later manual piloting demonstrations that appear on the return leg.

The mission specialists are wired into the schedule in ways that look small on paper and large in practice. Koch sits closest to Orion’s side hatch and leads hatch systems and operations. NASA also assigns her the setup of the toilet system after orbit insertion and gives her a central role in preparing the translunar injection burn. Hansen is responsible for initial checkout of life support equipment such as Orion’s potable water system and emergency equipment on Flight Day 1, and he is the crew member assigned to operate the docking hatch after splashdown in an emergency. NASA’s crew role sheetadds one more useful detail: both mission specialists monitor and command the spacecraft during the translunar injection burn and the later correction burns. The timeline is not just what happens when. It is also who has the console, the checklist, and the fallback task at each point.

Flight Day 2 and the Departure Toward the Moon

NASA’s public daily agenda gives Flight Day 2 a tone that is almost deceptive. The day begins with exercise. Wiseman and Glover set up and check out Orion’s flywheel exercise device and start the first workout session of the mission, while Koch and Hansen have exercise scheduled later in the day. That is not filler. On a spacecraft making its first crewed deep space trip, even routine exercise helps test life support performance under ordinary crew use, which is exactly the kind of quiet validation Artemis II exists to provide.

The main event of Flight Day 2 is the translunar injection burn. NASA describes this burn in the daily agenda and reference guide as the last major engine firing of the mission. That sounds odd until the geometry is understood. Because Orion is using a free-return trajectory, the translunar injection burn is both the departure from Earth orbit and, in a real sense, the commit point for coming home. In NASA’s wording, it effectively doubles as Orion’s deorbit burn two days into the mission, because once the spacecraft is on the proper free-return path, Earth and Moon gravity carry it through the loop and back. On April 2, NASA scheduled the burn for 7:49 p.m. EDT, to last 5 minutes 51 seconds, and to change Orion’s velocity by 1,272 feet per second if the mission management team approved it.

After translunar injection, NASA gives the crew a lighter schedule. That is not because the mission becomes simple. It is because Orion has crossed the line from near-Earth checkout into outbound cruise. The crew gets time to adapt to the deep space environment and begins a series of live video downlinks that NASA expects to continue on most mission days except the off-duty day and landing day. In schedule terms, this is the hinge between proving Orion can leave Earth and studying how it behaves once it has done so.

Days 3 Through 5 on the Way Out

NASA has broken the outbound leg into three days of smaller correction work and crew operations. Flight Day 3 carries the first outbound trajectory correction burn, scheduled shortly after the crew’s midday meal in the daily agenda. Hansen is tasked with preparing for that maneuver. The rest of the day includes CPR procedures in weightlessness, medical kit checkout, and another emergency communications system test on the Deep Space Network. The pacing is revealing. Artemis II is using the cruise phase not as idle transit, but as a sequence of short technical trials folded around the navigation events that keep Orion lined up for the Moon.

Flight Day 4 repeats that rhythm in a different register. A second outbound trajectory correction burn further refines the path to the Moon. NASA also gives each crew member an hour to review the surface geography targets they will photograph on the lunar flyby. Those targets depend on the final launch day and time, so the review period is not generic study time. It is mission-specific preparation tied to the exact geometry that the actual flight produced. NASA has also reserved a short dedicated period for photography of celestial bodies from Orion’s windows, which sounds modest until it is read alongside the flyby plan. Artemis II is not carrying a landing party, so the schedule gives substantial weight to what the astronauts can document and describe from inside the spacecraft.

Flight Day 5 is where the lunar environment starts to dominate the timing. NASA says Orion enters the lunar sphere of influence on this day, the moment when the Moon’s gravity becomes stronger than Earth’s. The crew then spends much of the morning testing the Orion Crew Survival System suits in space. The suits protect the crew during launch and reentry, yet NASA is also using Artemis II to test how well astronauts can don, pressurize, eat and drink through, and work in them during a deep space mission. Later on Flight Day 5, the third outbound trajectory correction burn takes place, closing out the series of outbound trims before the lunar flyby.

The Lunar Flyby on Flight Day 6

Flight Day 6 is the day most people will remember, though it is only one block inside a much larger test script. NASA’s daily agenda says Orion comes closest to the Moon on this day while also reaching the mission’s farthest distance from Earth. Depending on the exact launch day and time, Artemis II could break the record for the farthest humans have traveled from Earth, surpassing the Apollo 13 crew’s 248,655 mile distance record from 1970. For the actual April 1 launch, NASA scheduled live coverage beginning at 12:45 p.m. EDT on April 6 and expected the crew to surpass the Apollo 13 record at 1:45 p.m. EDT that same day.

NASA says Orion will pass within about 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the lunar surface as it swings around the far side of the Moon. That is much farther out than the 80 mile low pass of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, but still close enough that the Moon should appear to the crew about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length, according to the press kit. During this period the astronauts are scheduled to spend most of their working time taking photographs, recording video, and narrating observations that scientists can use later. NASA has been unusually direct about the purpose of that observational block. The crew is expected to give scientists a human description of lighting, relief, color, and texture that automated imagery alone does not fully replace.

This is where the schedule becomes less predictable in feel even when it remains precise on paper. Nobody on Earth can fully know, in advance prose, exactly how the far side will present itself through Orion’s windows before launch timing, sunlight angle, and the final correction burns settle into one real geometry. NASA says in its daily agenda and training coverage that the crew will not know what lighting conditions to expect until after launch. If the Sun is high, shadows will be short and subtle color differences will matter more. If the Sun is lower, ridges, crater rims, and slopes should stand out more sharply. That uncertainty is not a flaw in the mission plan. It is part of why the astronauts are there.

The lunar flyby also includes a communications blackout. NASA’s communications architecture article says Orion is expected to lose radio contact with Earth for about 41 minutes, while the daily agenda gives a broader planned range of about 30 to 50 minutes depending on launch timing. During that time the crew is expected to keep recording observations so the commentary can later be matched with the image sequence after communication returns. That blackout is a clean reminder that Artemis II is not simply reviving an Apollo postcard view. It is testing how a modern crew, a modern spacecraft, and a modern ground network perform when direct contact disappears at the very moment the flight reaches its most visually dramatic point.

The Return Leg Starts Before the Moon Is Behind Them

NASA schedules Flight Day 7 as the transition from lunar encounter to trans-Earth cruise. Orion exits the lunar sphere of influence on the morning of that day. Scientists on the ground then get early access to the crew’s impressions while the flyby is still fresh. Later in the day the spacecraft performs the first of three return trajectory correction burns. After that, much of the remaining day is off duty. The schedule almost breathes out here. The mission has completed its hardest visual and trajectory milestone, but the operational work is not over and the crew still has several demonstrations left before reentry.

Flight Day 8 is heavy on contingency thinking. NASA schedules a radiation shelter demonstration in which the crew uses Orion’s supplies and equipment to create a temporary protected zone for a high-radiation event such as a solar flare. That work sits beside radiation experiments already planned to collect data inside Orion. Later in the day the crew tries out manual piloting capability again, steering Orion through tasks that include centering a target in the windows, returning the spacecraft to a tail-to-Sun attitude, and comparing six degree-of-freedom and three degree-of-freedom control modes. This is not cinematic flying for its own sake. It is about crew handling characteristics, displays, procedures, and confidence.

Flight Day 9 moves the mission toward home in a very human way. NASA gives the crew time to review splashdown and reentry procedures, talk with the flight control team, and execute another return trajectory correction burn. The astronauts also test backup waste collection procedures in case Orion’s toilet is unavailable and try on orthostatic intolerance garments, the compression garments worn under suits to help reduce dizziness and circulatory problems after return to gravity. Spaceflight schedules can look grand from the outside. Inside the cabin they often come down to checklists about blood flow, body position, and plumbing. Artemis II is candid about that.

Flight Day 10 and the Push Back Through the Atmosphere

NASA’s last full mission day is devoted to getting the crew home in the right shape and the spacecraft into the right configuration. The final return trajectory correction burn occurs on Flight Day 10, and NASA’s press kit says it takes place roughly five hours before entry interface. Before that point, the crew restores the cabin to entry configuration, stows loose equipment, reinstalls seats, and gets back into their suits. The timing matters. Entry is not a matter of pointing Orion at Earth and waiting. The cabin has to be restored to a controlled environment in which impact loads, parachute deployment, and splashdown can be handled safely.

The next irreversible step is crew module separation from the service module. NASA’s launch-specific public timeline places that near mission elapsed time 9 days, 1 hour, 9 minutes, followed by entry interface near 9 days, 1 hour, 29 minutes and splashdown near 9 days, 1 hour, 42 minutes, while the broader January reference timeline places the same sequence a few minutes later. That is a good example of why the exact launch-specific timeline is the better guide once a real launch date exists. Either way, the sequence is the same. The service module, which handled the major burns and powered Orion through deep space, separates and burns up, leaving the crew module and its heat shield to handle the atmospheric return alone.

NASA states that Orion reaches entry interface while still about 400,000 feet above Earth and experiences temperatures around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry. The plasma created around the vehicle blocks communications during this phase. Orion’s direct-entry profile is long, not just steep, with NASA recovery training material and return-to-Earth coverage stating that from atmospheric entry to landing, the spacecraft flies about 1,775 nautical miles to its Pacific splashdown point. The same material says the capsule slows from nearly 25,000 miles per hour to roughly 325 miles per hour before the full parachute sequence takes over.

Parachutes, Water Impact, and Recovery

The parachute sequence is one of the most tightly scripted segments in the whole mission. NASA says the protective forward bay cover comes off below about 36,000 feet. Two 23 foot drogue parachutes deploy at 25,000 feet and slow the capsule to about 307 miles per hour. At 9,500 feet, three pilot parachutes pull out the three main parachutes, each 116 feet wide. NASA’s public materials round the final splashdown speed in slightly different ways, with one source describing approximately 17 miles per hour and another describing about 20 miles per hour. The defensible reading is that Orion is expected to hit the water at a relatively gentle high-teens speed after the main parachutes finish their work.

Water impact is not the end of the procedure. NASA notes that the crew module can land upright, upside down, or on its side. If it does not settle upright, five orange airbags inflate around the top of the spacecraft to right it. Only after the capsule is stable do the recovery teams move in. NASA’s training articles and return coverage describe a choreography that includes U.S. Navy divers in small boats, helicopters overhead, NASA and Navy medical personnel, and transfer to a waiting recovery ship. Hansen’s assigned emergency post-splashdown hatch role is one small part of a larger recovery script that NASA has rehearsed repeatedly off the coast of California.

The public schedule NASA released before launch points to splashdown at 8:06 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 10, in the Pacific Ocean, followed by a post-splashdown news conference at 10:35 p.m. EDT from Johnson Space Center. NASA’s press kit and return-to-Earth briefing both tie recovery to Navy support rather than treating splashdown as a purely NASA event. That is a reminder that the mission schedule does not end at the parachute cut. Crew extraction, ship transfer, early medical assessment, and spacecraft safing are all part of the same operational chain.

Weather still has a vote at the end. NASA’s landing and recovery criteria say that to recover Orion and the crew at the planned site, there can be no precipitation or thunderstorms within 30 nautical miles, significant wave height should be less than six feet, and winds should remain under 25 knots to deploy the recovery boats. That means the written schedule from launch to splashdown is exact only up to the point where Pacific sea state and visibility cooperate. The mission timeline is detailed. The ocean is not obligated to respect it.

Why the Schedule Looks the Way It Does

Artemis II is often described as the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, and that is accurate, but it can hide the deeper logic of the calendar NASA built. The mission does not spend about a day near Earth because NASA wanted a leisurely departure. It does so because Orion has to demonstrate manual proximity operations, early life support function, navigation performance beyond familiar low-Earth-orbit networks, and crew procedures before the program can trust the spacecraft deeper into cislunar space. The outbound cruise includes medical work, emergency communications checks, suit tests, observation rehearsals, and three navigation trims because Artemis II is supposed to generate operational knowledge, not just a successful headline.

That is also why the schedule ends up serving Artemis III long before Artemis III launches. The proximity operations work speaks directly to later rendezvous and docking tasks. The suit tests matter because the same crew survival systemhas to function when pressure integrity is not hypothetical. The radiation shelter exercise matters because any serious deep-space architecture has to live with solar particle events, not just model them. The manual piloting work matters because a spacecraft intended for lunar missions cannot rely on the idea that every task of consequence will be automated away. Artemis II is not set up as a scenic loop around the Moon. It is arranged as a chain of proofs that future crews will either inherit with confidence or revisit with hard lessons.

What Artemis II Will Settle Before Artemis III

If Artemis II runs to schedule, the mission will settle more than launch credibility. It will answer whether the full SLS-Orion system behaves as expected with four people aboard rather than mannequins, ballast, and sensors. It will answer whether Orion’s life support, cabin procedures, communications links, crew displays, manual flying qualities, radiation shelter concept, and return profile work together as a crewed deep-space system rather than as a set of separately tested parts. That distinction matters because space programs often fail not when components are weak, but when interfaces are exposed to real timing, real fatigue, real crew workload, and real distance.

The flight will not settle everything. Artemis II will not put boots on the Moon, dock in lunar orbit, or prove the full lunar surface architecture. Yet by the time Orion reaches splashdown, NASA should know far more about the schedule margins that actually hold, the crew tasks that compress badly, the operations blocks that need reordering, and the procedures that look sound in simulation but feel awkward in flight. That is the new point at the end of this schedule. A lunar flyby is the visible event. The hidden outcome is a rewritten calendar for the missions that follow. NASA’s mission page, training coverage, and real-time tracking tools all point to the same idea: this flight is a schedule for learning, not just a schedule for travel.

Appendix: Top 10 Questions Answered in This Article

When did Artemis II launch?

Artemis II launched at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1, 2026 from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA had opened a two-hour launch window earlier that evening, but a brief hold at T-10 minutes pushed the actual liftoff time slightly later. The mission became the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion.

How long is the Artemis II mission scheduled to last?

NASA lists Artemis II as an approximately 10 day mission. The launch-specific public schedule points to splashdown on April 10, 2026, after a launch on April 1. Public mission pages and the daily agenda use the same general duration.

Why does Artemis II stay near Earth before heading to the Moon?

Orion spends time in Earth orbit so the crew can check spacecraft systems, practice proximity operations with the ICPS, and verify communications and navigation performance before departing for the Moon. NASA built this phase into the mission because Artemis II is a flight test, not just a transportation run. That early block also sets up the orbital geometry needed for translunar injection.

What is the translunar injection burn?

The translunar injection burn is Orion’s major departure burn from high Earth orbit toward the Moon. NASA describes it as the last major engine firing of the mission because the spacecraft then follows a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. On April 2, NASA scheduled that burn for 7:49 p.m. EDT, pending mission approval.

How close will Artemis II come to the Moon?

NASA says the crew will pass about 4,000 to 6,000 miles above the lunar surface during the flyby. The exact distance depends on the final launch timing and the resulting geometry of the mission. Even at that distance, Orion will still pass far closer to the Moon than any human mission has in more than 50 years.

Will the Artemis II crew lose contact with Earth behind the Moon?

Yes. NASA says Orion is expected to experience a planned communications blackout as it passes behind the Moon. One NASA source gives the blackout as about 41 minutes, while another gives a broader expected range of 30 to 50 minutesdepending on launch timing.

When is Artemis II expected to break the human distance record from Earth?

For the actual April 1 launch, NASA scheduled the mission to surpass the Apollo 13 crew’s farthest-distance-from-Earth record at 1:45 p.m. EDT on April 6, 2026. That milestone occurs during the lunar flyby period. The exact maximum distance depends on the launch date and time.

How does Artemis II return to Earth?

After circling the Moon, Orion follows a free-return path back to Earth with three small return trajectory correction burns refining the track home. On the last mission day, the crew module separates from the service module, reenters the atmosphere, deploys parachutes, and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. NASA’s current public schedule places splashdown on April 10.

What slows Orion down before splashdown?

Orion relies on atmospheric drag first, then a staged parachute system. NASA says two drogue parachutes deploy at 25,000 feet, followed by three pilot parachutes at 9,500 feet that pull out the three main parachutes. Those mains slow the capsule to a water impact speed in roughly the high-teens miles-per-hour range.

Who recovers the Artemis II crew after splashdown?

NASA recovers the crew with help from the U.S. Navy and other supporting teams. Recovery planning includes divers, small boats, helicopters, medical teams, and transfer to a recovery ship in the Pacific. NASA has rehearsed these procedures repeatedly off the California coast before the mission.