# After Artemis II's lunar flyby, NASA turns to the harder Artemis III landing
> Record-setting crewed flyby flew in April; the moon landing now hinges on Starship and a grounded V3

**Meta:** type: event · date: 2026-04-10 · heads: 장기전, 누가 결정하는가 · 7 takes · 2 lenses · 2 regions

## Summary

[NASA's](/ko/entity/nasa) [Artemis II](/ko/entity/artemis) crew, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and the
CSA's Jeremy Hansen, splashed down on 10 April 2026 after a 10-day, ~695,081-mile crewed lunar
flyby, the farthest humans have ever travelled, having launched 1 April on SLS from Kennedy. The
mission validated Orion's life support, manual handling and rendezvous data needed for a landing.
Attention now turns to the far harder Artemis III, which requires a crewed lunar landing using a
[SpaceX](/ko/entity/spacex) [Starship](/ko/entity/starship) lander still in flight test, and Starship is
[grounded](/ko/n/starship-flight-12-booster-failure-2026) after its V3 booster crash. The US-China moon
race sharpens as [China](/ko/n/china-lunar-change7-2026) targets a crewed landing by 2030. Artemis III's
date depends largely on Starship's recovery, not on NASA's own hardware.

## By the numbers

- ~695,081 miles, total distance flown, a crewed record (beating Apollo 13).
- 10 days, Artemis II mission duration.
- 4, crew, including the first Canadian to fly to the Moon.
- 2030, China's target for a crewed lunar landing (the pacing rival).

## Why it matters

Artemis II proved Orion can carry humans to the Moon and back; Artemis III must put boots on the
surface before [China](/ko/n/china-lunar-change7-2026) does. The bottleneck is now the
[Starship](/ko/n/starship-flight-12-booster-failure-2026) lander, making a NASA flagship hostage to
SpaceX's test campaign.

## What to watch

- Starship lander progress and whether the V3 grounding slips Artemis III.
- NASA's official Artemis III target date after the assessments.
- China's crewed-landing milestones (Long March 10, Mengzhou, Lanyue).

## Regional takes (batched by bias / lens)

### unlabelled
- **NASA (Artemis II return)** (United States, en) — NASA's official release on the Artemis II crew's 10 April 2026 splashdown after a record-distance crewed lunar flyby, the agency's own account of the milestone and what it validated for Artemis III.
  Source: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-record-setting-artemis-ii-moonfarers-back-to-earth/
- **NASA (initial assessments)** (United States, en) — NASA's post-flight assessment positioning Artemis II results as on-track for future missions, the official read on Orion's performance ahead of the crewed landing.
  Source: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nasa-on-track-for-future-missions-with-initial-artemis-ii-assessments/
- **Space.com** (United States, en) — 
  Source: https://www.space.com/news/live/artemis-2-nasa-moon-mission-updates-april-10-2026
- **Wikipedia (Artemis II)** (Global, en) — 
  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II
- **Wikipedia (Artemis program)** (Global, en) — 
  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
- **Reuters** (Global, en) — 
  Source: https://www.reuters.com/science/

### US mainstream
- **CNN** (United States, en) — Covers the 1 April launch and the stakes: the first crewed lunar flyby in 50 years as the proving step before Artemis III's landing, which depends on a SpaceX Starship lander still in testing.
  > "The first crewed lunar flyby in five decades is the proving step before a landing that depends on Starship."
  Source: https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/01/science/live-news/artemis-2-nasa-launch

## Across the graph
- Related: [[china-lunar-change7-2026]], [[starship-flight-12-booster-failure-2026]], [[china-tiangong-shenzhou-2026]]
- Entities: Artemis, Nasa, Spacex, United States, Starship

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Canonical: https://rbtfl.xyz/ko/n/artemis-3-post-flyby-2026