Perched on Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B, NASA’s Artemis 2 SLS rocket is poised to propel itself into the heavens as early as Feb. 8, for a 10-day lunar flyby mission carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover and Christina Koch in their Orion spacecraft.
While the world holds its collective breath and awaits humanity’s return to the moon after more than a half-century for a record-breaking lunar voyage, Time magazine is celebrating the momentous event with a special Artemis 2 cover issue that hit newsstands on Friday (Jan. 30).
Kluger’s main Artemis 2 feature, entitled “Back to the Moon,” delivers engaging context and provides contrasts and comparisons to Apollo 8. That 1968 NASA mission was the first crewed flight to orbit the moon and return safely, and helped pave the way for Apollo 11‘s lunar landing in July 1969. The importance of that first flight beyond Earth orbit can’t be overstated, as the fate of the entire program relied on the success of its crew of Jim Lovell, Frank Boorman and William Anders.
Artemis 2’s official trajectory will push humans 4,700 miles (7,560 kilometers) beyond the far side of the moon. That will be farther than our species has ever traveled, breaking the old record of 158 miles (254 km) past the moon, held by the Apollo 13 astronauts during that ill-fated 1970 flight.
“58 years after Apollo 8’s historic trip around the moon, NASA is heading back,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote in a Friday post on X that featured side-by-side Time magazine covers from 1968 and 2026. “This time, our crew is going farther into space than any human in history.”
“Artemis 2 marks the beginning of the boldest series of missions the world has ever seen,” he added. “Through the Artemis campaign, we will maintain American superiority in space, land American astronauts on the moon, and establish a lunar base all before the end of 2028.”
As Jeffrey Kluger summarizes in the new Time magazine cover story, the Artemis 2 launch can also be experienced as an uplifting, unifying moment at a tumultuous time when it’s needed most — something it would have in common with Apollo 8.
“A return to the lunar neighborhood will not only represent a significant — if temporary — edge in any space race that does exist with China, but also offer a kind of public uplift that, since the 1960s, spaceflight has uniquely been able to provide,” he writes. “Not every mission, of course, touches the collective soul, but some do: John Glenn’s three orbits of the Earth in 1962; Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve lyricism; Apollo 11’s lunar landing; Apollo 13’s hair’s-breadth rescue — all were less American experiences than global dramas, global triumphs, global joys.
“With Artemis 2, the lunar ledger will at last be reopened and four more names inscribed — a fine and fit crew who will be sent into the cosmic deep as emissaries of the 8.3 billion of us who will remain forever earthbound. Apollo 8 saved 1968. Artemis 2 may work similar magic today.”
