NASA's Artemis program is the United States' campaign to put astronauts back on the Moon and use that effort as a stepping stone to Mars. NASA frames the goal in plain terms on its Artemis program page: under Artemis, the agency “will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.” The “increasingly difficult missions” phrasing captures the program's structure—it is not a single flight but a sequence, each building capability for the next, beginning with uncrewed validation and progressing to surface operations and, eventually, a sustained human presence.

The mission sequence is the clearest way to understand the program. Artemis I, launched in 2022, was the first in the series: an uncrewed flight in which the Space Launch System rocket lofted the Orion spacecraft on a journey around the Moon and back, validating the heavy-lift rocket and the crew capsule before anyone flew aboard. Artemis II is the first crewed flight, carrying astronauts around the Moon and back—NASA describes it as marking a key step toward a long-term return to the Moon and future missions to Mars. Subsequent missions in NASA's published plan progress toward crewed lunar landings and the assembly of orbiting and surface infrastructure, with the agency stating it is increasing its cadence of missions and standardizing the SLS rocket configuration.

"Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars."— NASA, source

The hardware: SLS, Orion, Gateway, and landers

Artemis runs on four principal pieces of hardware, each with a defined role. The Space Launch System is the heavy-lift rocket—NASA describes it as part of the agency's backbone for deep-space exploration—that provides the energy to send a crewed spacecraft beyond low Earth orbit toward the Moon. Orion is the crew vehicle: NASA states it “is developed to be capable of sending astronauts to the Moon” and serves as “the exploration vehicle that will carry and sustain the crew on Artemis missions to the Moon and return them safely to Earth.” The Gateway is a planned small space station in lunar orbit that NASA describes as central to the Artemis missions, intended as a staging point for surface expeditions. And the human landing systems—next-generation landers NASA is developing with industry—are, in the agency's words, what “will safely carry Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface and back.”

That last category is where Artemis most directly intersects the commercial space economy. Rather than build the lunar landers entirely in-house, NASA is working with private companies to develop the human landing systems, contracting for the surface-delivery capability much as it does for crew and cargo transport to low Earth orbit. The program also leans on commercial robotic deliveries through a separate initiative for science and technology payloads, layering uncrewed precursor missions beneath the crewed flights. The result is a program that blends government-developed heavy-lift and crew hardware with commercially provided landing and delivery services.

From Artemis I to the surface missions

The program's published trajectory moves from validation to landing. NASA describes Artemis I, launched in 2022, as “the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars”—an uncrewed shakedown of the integrated SLS-and-Orion stack. Artemis II follows as the first flight with a crew aboard, which NASA frames as marking “a key step toward long-term return to the Moon and future missions to Mars.” Beyond it, NASA's plan progresses toward crewed lunar landings and the buildout of orbital and surface infrastructure, and the agency states it is “increasing its cadence of missions under the Artemis program, standardizing the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket configuration, and adding a new mission.” The standardization language signals an effort to make later flights more repeatable by settling on a common rocket configuration rather than reworking the vehicle each time.

NASA also describes the scientific purpose that underlies the hardware. Through Artemis, the agency says, it “will address high priority science questions, focusing on those that are best accomplished by on-site human explorers on and around the Moon and Mars by using robotic surface and orbiting systems.” The framing pairs human explorers with robotic systems—astronauts on the surface supported by uncrewed landers and orbiters—rather than treating the crewed and robotic efforts as separate programs. That integration of people and machines is the throughline connecting Artemis's crewed flights to the robotic deliveries that precede and accompany them.

The Artemis Accords and the international frame

Artemis is also a diplomatic framework, not only an engineering program. NASA, in coordination with the U.S. Department of State and seven other initial signatory nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020. NASA states that the Accords now have more than 60 signatories and “provide a common set of principles to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space as many countries and private companies conduct missions and operations around the Moon.” The Accords are a statement of principles—covering matters such as transparency, interoperability, and the peaceful exploration of space—rather than a binding treaty, and their growth in signatories reflects an effort to set shared norms for lunar activity as more actors reach the Moon.

Two caveats keep the picture accurate. First, Artemis is an active, evolving program: mission dates, hardware configurations, and the cadence NASA targets have shifted over time and are stated by NASA as plans and targets rather than fixed certainties. Second, Artemis is a campaign assembled from many contracts, vehicles, and international partners, so describing it requires distinguishing what has flown (Artemis I, uncrewed, 2022) from what is planned. With those limits noted, the program's throughline is consistent in NASA's own description: a sequence of increasingly capable human missions, built on the SLS-and-Orion stack with commercial landers and a lunar Gateway, aimed at returning people to the Moon and laying the groundwork for Mars—governed, on the international side, by the Artemis Accords.