The last time America sent humans beyond Earth’s orbit was December 1972, and tomorrow evening at 6:24 p.m., we do it again. Four astronauts will launch from Kennedy Space Center on a ten-day mission that carries them further into deep space than any human being has ever traveled, within 4,700 miles of the far side of the Moon, past the distance record set by the crippled Apollo 13, and back home at roughly 25,000 miles per hour. Legacy media is barely covering it, and that is a failure worth naming out loud.
Artemis II validates the Orion capsule, tests its life support systems in deep space for the first time, and builds the engineering foundation that makes every subsequent mission possible. As a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, I have watched this program develop up close, and what launches tomorrow is the bridge to Artemis IV in 2028, when American boots return to the lunar surface for the first time in over fifty years, and the most concrete signal this country has sent in a generation that Mars is a real destination with a real timeline.
It is worth remembering what Apollo launched against. December 1968, the year America sent humans to the Moon’s orbit for the first time, was one of the most violent and divided years in modern American history. The country was at war, two of its most consequential leaders had just been assassinated, and the national mood was grim. NASA launched anyway, and what that program produced did not just win a space race, it redefined what American industry and ingenuity were capable of and set the standard for a generation. Artemis carries that same weight, whether the news cycle acknowledges it or not.
China is not waiting. They have already landed robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the only nation to ever do so, and have set 2030 as their target for crewed lunar landings near the south pole. That location matters enormously, because its shadowed craters hold vast deposits of ice that could supply drinking water and rocket fuel for sustained deep space operations. Whoever establishes a presence there first holds a significant advantage in everything that follows, commercially, militarily, and strategically. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has made beating China to that objective an explicit priority, and tomorrow is the first crewed step in that direction.
Every major civilization that has thrived in human history did so because it refused to stop pushing past what it already knew. Exploration is not a luxury, it is how nations remain consequential. America understood that in 1969, and the world stopped to watch. Tomorrow we begin the journey back, with more capability, more ambition, and a clearer destination than we have had in fifty years.
Watch the launch. This is history, and it belongs to all of us.
Rep. Pat Harrigan represents North Carolina’s 10th District in Congress.