Sls

TL;DR Artemis II splashed down April 11, 2026 - first crewed lunar return since 1972, setting a new distance record of 252,756 miles Crewed rockets in 2026: SLS/Orion, Starship, New Glenn, and China’s Long March 10 - government and commercial programmes running in parallel The Moon is the near-term focus (Artemis III lander race); Mars remains Starship’s long bet Reusability and launch cadence now matter as much as raw lift capacity This decade may be the most consequential for crewed spaceflight since Apollo - but with a different industrial base A few weeks ago, four astronauts came home from the Moon for the first time since 1972. Artemis II splashed down on April 11, 2026, after a nine-day flight that took its crew further from Earth than any human has ever travelled - 252,756 miles, a new record set by Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. ...

TL;DR SLS and Starship are two bets on the same goal: SLS is the traditional aerospace approach (proven Shuttle-era hardware, simulate everything, launch when confident), Starship is the empirical one (test by launching, iterate fast) The cost chasm is the story: SLS launches are estimated at $2-4 billion each and fully expendable, while SpaceX targets $10 million per launch at scale with full-stack reusability Capability differs less than philosophy - SLS Block 1 lifts 95 tonnes to LEO, Starship 100+ tonnes fully reusable, and both have roles in Artemis SLS looks like a sunset vehicle; Starship is designed as a platform, but it still has to prove orbital refuelling and rapid reuse before the comparison is settled The likely end state is convergence: NASA missions increasingly flown on commercial reusable hardware Two Paths Diverge The 21st century space race isn’t between countries - it’s between philosophies. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and SpaceX’s Starship represent two radically different bets on how to explore deep space. ...

Mission status note: this page includes a time-sensitive status snapshot from April 6, 2026. For live updates, use the official NASA links below and the site tracking page. In Brief Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis program and the first time astronauts have traveled toward the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission uses NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth. ...