1 revisions for "Four Astronauts, $93 Billion, and a Cracked Heat Shield: Inside Artemis II's Moonshot"
NASA's Artemis II mission launched on April 1, 2026, sending four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby — the first crewed journey beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. As the crew passes the halfway mark to the Moon, the mission carries both historic milestones and unresolved questions about a $93 billion program dogged by cost overruns, schedule delays, and a heat shield that shed chunks of material during its last flight.