Artemis 2 by the Numbers: Breaking Down NASA’s Big Return to the Moon

We’re just days from NASA’s first launch attempt for the much-anticipated Artemis 2 mission. Here are the key numbers to know as the space agency gets ready to send astronauts around the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. NASA is hoping to launch its megarocket on April 1, sending a crew of four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the Moon. There’s a lot to unpack with Artemis 2, so I’m breaking it down the simplest way: by the numbers. Assuming Artemis 2 launches on April 1, it will have been 19,474 days since humans last left low Earth orbit (I had to tack on an extra day because Orion won’t depart for the Moon until the second day of the mission). That’s the time between Apollo 17—the final Moon mission of the Apollo program in 1972—and NASA’s next attempt to send astronauts past the Van Allen belts. So, yeah, it’s been a minute—28,042,560 to be exact—since humanity last ventured beyond the protective bubble of Earth’s magnetosphere and set course for the Moon. Exerting 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world (with all due respect to SpaceX’s Starship, which is not yet fully