NASA’s Artemis II reveals why humans still love the moon | Scientific American

April 11, 2026

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Artemis II reveals why humans still love the moon

The triumph of NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in a half-century is a reminder of what the moon really means for Earth—and why we’re going back

By Lee Billings edited by Claire Cameron

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover (left) and Christina Koch (right) pose aboard the flight deck of the U.S.S. John P. Murtha on April 10, 2026 after their successful splashdown and recovery in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Glover, Artemis II’s pilot, is the first Black astronaut to fly to the moon; Koch, an Artemis II mission specialist, is the first female lunar explorer.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA has launched four astronauts on a pioneering journey around the moon—the Artemis II mission. Follow our coverage here.

NASA’s Artemis II mission heralds a new era of space exploration. It is not hyperbole to say that, for many, the mission’s astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—returned to Earth on Friday as heroes. Their trip around the moon and back transfixed the world as they traveled farther from our planet than any human has gone before.

“It’s a huge moment for everybody,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman during a space agency broadcast shortly after the Artemis II crew’s splashdown off the coast of San Diego. “This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”

NASA’s 10-day there-and-back voyage around the moon was the make-or-break milestone for U.S. human spaceflight, which has languished in low-Earth orbit ever since Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan uttered these parting words on the lunar surface in 1972: “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”

NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman and Canadian Space Agency astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (both at left) talk with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (right) and other personnel (center) aboard the flight deck of the U.S.S. John P. Murtha on April 10, 2026 after the mission’s successful splashdown and crew recovery.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

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It has taken more than fifty years to get back. The reason why is as cultural as it is political or technical. Peace and hope aside, the Apollo program was created by conflict, born out of the technological advances of World War II and the Cold War era’s extreme anxiety over the terrifying prospect of nuclear annihilation. Without competition from the Soviet Union, which had launched the first human into space and was pursuing its own lunar program, Apollo might have been abandoned—or never even existed. Apollo 11, the U.S. mission that first landed humans on the moon, was the program’s high-water mark. Americans, momentarily satisfied and with the Soviet Union outmatched, moved on. Inertia kept Apollo going for six more moon missions before the program’s end.

Now, collective western anxiety over the rise of China’s rapidly advancing space program and desire to go further into space beyond the moon are driving Artemis forward. If Artemis II had experienced serious problems or ended in failure, it would have delayed but perhaps not ended the ongoing U.S. lunar push, just as the tragic fire that took the lives of the Apollo 1 astronauts didn’t derail that program.

What remains to be seen is how far Artemis will go. With Artemis, NASA is aiming to build an enduring human outpost on the moon, and even to travel onward to Mars. But none of that is a given.

Much work remains before any astronauts make a 21st-century footfall on the moon. There is no guarantee that either the U.S. timeline of a human landing in 2028 or China’s target of 2030 will be met. But Artemis II is a positive signal. By once again sending crews to the lunar vicinity and returning them safely to Earth, NASA has shown that some of the Apollo era’s faded glory can be rekindled—and may yet be surpassed.

But any geopolitical calculus doesn’t entirely capture all the motivations for going to the moon, which are as myriad as they are subjective.

For one, we go because it’s there—an extraterrestrial Everest to climb. For another, we go because of the thrill of exploration and discovery, feeding the curiosity that makes us human. Or perhaps we go because lawmakers—chief among them recent U.S. Presidents and Congressio