When do launches to the Moon take place?

There's no open-ended date for heading to the Moon. Every mission has brief launch windows, shaped by the Moon's position in its orbit, by the energy the rocket can deliver, by the lighting expected at the target site, and by the conditions forecast at the splashdown point on return. If a countdown is scrubbed, the next opportunity usually isn't the following day, but days or weeks later, once the geometry lines up again.

Apollo 11, the flight of the first Moon landing, launched on July 16, 1969, at 13:32 UTC from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. It entered lunar orbit on July 19 at 17:21:50 UTC with a retrograde burn of the main engine, landed on July 20 at 20:17:40 UTC, and splashed down in the Pacific on July 24 at 16:50:35 UTC. The program's entire schedule was built around windows of this kind, which recurred every lunar month.

The most recent crewed launch toward the Moon was Artemis II, which departed on April 1, 2026, looped around the Moon without entering orbit, and splashed down on April 10 after 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes of flight. The next mission, Artemis III, is scheduled for 2027, but it will not head to the Moon: it will meet its objectives in low Earth orbit, where it will test docking with one or both crewed landing systems and the surface suits. The program's Moon landings will begin with Artemis IV, so the next launch bound for the lunar surface will come after that test.