NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen take off on a T-38 training flight from Ellington Field on Feb. 11, 2026, as a waning crescent Moon hovers above. Koch and Hansen, along with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, are part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Artemis II will fly around the Moon and back to test Orion’s systems and capabilities before returning the crew to a splashdown off the California coast.

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, Artemis will pave the way for new U.S. crewed missions on the lunar surface in preparation to send the first astronauts to Mars.

Image credit: NASA/Brendan Finnegan