Artemis II & DART updates
NASA’s Artemis II crew is in final training ahead of an April launch window, and DART’s mission has confirmed a measurable asteroid orbit change — H3 rocket testing is also being tracked as agencies talk deep‑space returns after decades [](https://x.com/i/status/2033163752011673723).
The Artemis II crew is Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, as listed on NASA’s mission page. (nasa.gov) NASA’s Artemis II mission page now shows a target launch in April 2026, and agency planning called for a rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B beginning as early as Jan. 17 with a four‑mile crawler trip that can take up to 12 hours. (nasa.gov) Orion — the spacecraft the crew dubbed “Integrity” — is slated for an approximately 10‑day lunar flyby that will put the crew farther from Earth than Apollo 13’s record 248,655 miles, testing deep‑space systems and crew autonomy. (nasa.gov) New peer‑reviewed analysis shows DART’s Sept. 26, 2022 impact on Dimorphos shortened the moonlet’s ~12‑hour orbit by about 33 minutes and, for the first time, measurably shifted the binary pair’s 770‑day solar orbit by roughly 0.15 seconds. (nasa.gov) NASA researchers measured a momentum‑enhancement factor of about two from escaping debris — meaning ejecta roughly doubled the effect of the spacecraft’s kinetic impact — and ESA’s Hera, launched Oct. 7, 2024, is scheduled to arrive at Didymos in late 2026 to make close‑up measurements of that impact site. (nasa.gov) Japan’s H3 heavy‑lift vehicle, developed by JAXA/Mitsubishi with the new LE‑9 main engine (standard H3: length ~63 m, mass ~574 t), suffered a high‑profile flight failure on Dec. 22, 2025 that left a geolocation/navigation satellite in the wrong orbit — the second major anomaly after its 2023 debut. (global.jaxa.jp)
