Which Artemis mission lands on the Moon?

For years, the program's first landing was tied to Artemis III. No longer: NASA now describes that mission as a series of objectives in low Earth orbit meant to demonstrate the critical systems future landings will need, starting with Artemis IV. On that flight, planned for 2027 with four crew members aboard Orion, one or both human landing systems will be tested in low orbit, with rendezvous and docking maneuvers.

The landing is thus left to Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028. Its profile is the one expected of the program: the crew travels to lunar orbit and two of its members descend to the surface to spend close to a week near the south pole, the region chosen for its permanently shadowed craters and the possible presence of water ice.

The sequence doesn't start from scratch. Artemis II, the program's first crewed flight, launched on 1 April 2026 and splashed down on 10 April after 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes of mission around the Moon, without landing. With the reorganization announced that same year, the program now inserts an additional test of the landing modules before attempting the descent, so that technical firsts aren't all bunched into a single flight: a new spacecraft, orbital refuelling, descent to the south pole and return. The price is landing later; the gain is doing so after a prior rehearsal.