Artemis I

Artemis I lifted off on November 16, 2022, the first flight of the Space Launch System — the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit — carrying an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 25-day shakedown cruise around the Moon. Orion flew farther from Earth than any spacecraft built for humans, reaching 268,563 miles out in a distant retrograde orbit.

The mission wrung out every system needed to carry astronauts: the European service module’s propulsion, deep-space navigation and communications, and finally Orion’s 25,000-mph skip reentry, which sheared off the heat shield’s outer layers in unexpected ways that engineers studied closely before the crewed Artemis II. Splashing down on the Apollo 17 anniversary, Artemis I opened the campaign to return humans to the lunar surface.