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Artemis II Enters Final Prep for Early 2026 Moon Flyby, With Crew Poised to Lead Deep-Space Health Study

NASA readies a suite of health experiments to turn the four-person crew into primary test subjects for deep-space biology.

Canadian Moon astronaut Jeremy Hansen told Ars Technica that he's hoping to "take a very short nap on the pad."
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Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, seen here, and three NASA astronauts — Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch — could be blasting off on the Artemis II mission to fly around the moon as early as February 2026. They will not only be testing their Orion spacecraft, but also conducting valuable health research on living in deep space.

Overview

  • The roughly 10-day Orion mission targets an earliest launch window in February 2026 for a lunar flyby that aims to take the crew about 250,000 miles from Earth and roughly 6,400 miles beyond the Moon’s far side.
  • Crew members Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen continue intensive training, with Hansen set to become the first non-American beyond low-Earth orbit if the mission succeeds.
  • NASA’s integrated research campaign includes ARCHeR wearable monitoring of sleep, stress, and cognition before, during, and after flight, as well as in-flight dry saliva and blood sampling to assess immune changes and potential viral reactivation.
  • AVATAR tissue-analog chips carrying each astronaut’s blood cells will fly as bone-marrow stand‑ins to measure radiation impacts in deep space and inform future countermeasures.
  • Operations are tightly scripted in the capsule’s 330-cubic-foot living space, with a compact flywheel for cardio and resistance exercise, while later Artemis plans include a delayed Artemis III landing no earlier than mid-2027 and future Gateway assembly featuring Canadarm3.