Artemis II has returned the first lunar travelers in more than a half-century safely back to Houston, and NASA is already pointing to the next step in the Artemis program. At a jubilant homecoming celebration on Saturday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman introduced the crew—commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen—and framed their return as a milestone that ends one phase and sets up another.
Isaacman tied the mission’s safe comeback to the agency’s audience on Earth, saying, “To people all around the world who look up and dream about what is possible, the long wait is over.” As the crew reunited with families after their Friday splashdown in the Pacific, NASA officials said work aimed at future moon landings is now shifting forward.
During the celebration, entry flight director Rick Henfling said NASA’s next mission timeline is close at hand, adding, “The next mission’s right around the corner.” NASA also said it intends to name the Artemis III crew “soon,” echoing an approach used in earlier Artemis and Apollo planning: reduce risk for the later landings by rehearsing key steps before landing happens.
Artemis III, already placed into NASA’s next-year docket, is expected to involve docking practice. The plan described by NASA is for astronauts—who are not yet named—to practice docking the Orion capsule with a lunar lander or multiple landers while in orbit around Earth.
NASA’s next steps also extend beyond testing in orbit to the broader question of who will have the hardware ready for landings farther along the timeline. In the race laid out by the report, Elon Musk’s Starship and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin’s Blue Moon are competing as lunar-landing efforts are mapped to Artemis IV’s 2028 landing goal.
The report said the intended target for Artemis IV is the moon’s south polar region, which NASA links to the prospect of ice in permanently shadowed craters. Isaacman has envisioned a $20 billion to $30 billion moon base at that location, and the mission plan described in the coverage hinges on that ice being available for water and rocket fuel.
Even as planning for Artemis III and Artemis IV continues, parts of the Artemis pipeline are already visible on the ground. The docking mechanism for Artemis III’s in-orbit trial is described as already at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, with the latest model Starship described as close to launching on a test flight from South Texas and a scaled-down version of Blue Moon planned to attempt a lunar landing later this year.
The Artemis II crew’s journey also included personal moments that NASA officials and observers highlighted as part of the mission’s impact. The report said the crew, during its nearly 10-day flight, tearfully requested that a fresh, bright lunar crater be named for Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.
Others contrasted the emotional public-facing side of Artemis II with earlier approaches. Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart said he loved flying the lunar module in low-Earth orbit as “a test pilot’s dream,” but also noted there was “no question, he noted, that ‘the real astronauts’ at least in the public’s mind were the ones who walked on the moon.”
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said one of the hardest parts is the emotional cycle of becoming so close to crews and their families, then sending them back out again. Kshatriya told reporters afterward, “You know what’s at stake,” and said the effort “is going to take risk to explore,” adding that NASA has to “make sure you find the right line between being paralyzed by it and being able to manage it.”
Wiseman used the homecoming celebration to urge the next group of astronauts to prepare. Issuing a rallying cry to the rows of blue-flight-suited astronauts, he said, “It is time to go and be ready,” and added, “It takes courage. It takes determination,” telling them, “you all are freaking going and we are going to be standing there supporting you every single step of the way in every possible way possible.”