Photo by Jacob Slagel ’26.
NASA’s Artemis program is NASA’s plan to send astronauts back to the moon and use what they learn there to prepare for future missions deeper into space. On NASA’s Artemis II mission page, NASA states that the mission is planned as a crewed lunar flyby, with four astronauts orbiting the Moon for approximately 10 days, using the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The page also lists the launch timing as no earlier than March 2026.
NASA has been running major tests ahead of the mission. In a Feb. 3 update on NASA’s missions blog, NASA said it completed a wet dress rehearsal, a full-fueling test meant to catch problems before launch. In the same set of updates, NASA reported that the test countdown was halted due to a liquid hydrogen leak, and teams worked to save the vehicle and drain the tanks.
Even with a program as large as Artemis, not every student is following the details closely. Cooper Plotts ’26 said he had not heard about the Artemis program before this week. After learning that NASA is preparing to send astronauts back toward the moon, Plotts said it sounds like a rare experience for the crew. “It’d be a pretty cool experience for them to be able to go back up and experience it,” he said.
Photo by Jacob Slagel ’26.
Plotts said the return to the moon feels exciting, even if it is not something he hears about every day. “It feels exciting but also distant,” he said. Still, Plotts said space exploration matters because there is much humans do not yet know. “There’s still so much we don’t know,” he said.
Plotts also has a personal connection to launches from growing up in Florida. He visited Kennedy Space Center on an elementary school field trip and saw a rocket launch that same day. Plotts described how the rocket seemed to move slowly at first, then looked faster as it rose through clouds and disappeared from view. “That was a really cool experience,” he said.
NASA describes Artemis as a long-term exploration campaign focused on returning to the moon for science and technology development while building experience for future missions to Mars, according to NASA’s main Artemis overview page. For Plotts, learning about Artemis made future launches feel more worth following, especially because launches can sometimes be visible from far away in Florida.
