Could 2026 be the year humanity finally sees lunar terrain that no Apollo eye has ever seen? NASA’s Artemis II mission will launch early in the year, carrying commander Reid Wiseman, astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a ten-day flight that loops behind the Moon. That trajectory will give the crew a view of extensive regions of the lunar far side-unseen during the equatorial-oriented missions of Apollo. Those observations could inform geological studies and help pinpoint future landing sites for Artemis crews.
Artemis II is more than a sightseeing voyage. It will be the first crewed test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, systems that have been in development and confronted much turbulence during the years of their making. The mission will validate life-support systems, deep-space navigation, and docking maneuvers critical for subsequent lunar landings. The design of Orion incorporates advanced radiation shielding, autonomous guidance, and deep-space communications arrays for sustained operations beyond low-Earth orbit. The flyby profile will accelerate the spacecraft to lunar distances, loop it behind the Moon, and return it to Earth without lunar orbit insertion-a high-speed proving ground for crew safety and vehicle resilience.
Meanwhile, as Artemis II scouts from afar, the surface campaign is taking shape. Blue Origin is preparing its supersized Blue Moon Mk1 robotic lander for a demonstration mission to the Moon’s south polar region. Standing 8 meters tall and massing 21,350 kg, the Mk1 dwarfs the Apollo Lunar Module and can deliver roughly 3,000 kg of payload. Powered by the throttleable BE-7 engine-producing up to 44,000 N of thrust from liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen-the lander will test precision landing within 100 meters of Shackleton Crater, a site of high interest due to potential water ice in permanently shadowed zones. NASA’s SCALPSS instrument suite will record plume effects on regolith during descent, providing data to refine landing protocols and mitigate surface erosion risks.
The Mk1 mission will also validate cryogenic fluid handling, avionics, and continuous downlink communications capabilities that will transition to the crew-rated Mk2 lander for Artemis V. The engineering approach at Blue Origin also provided for the vertical integration of environmental control and life-support systems to ensure robustness in the supply chain. It is currently working concurrently to take forward its Lunar Transporter for in-space cryogenic propellant transfer, a requirement of Mk2’s orbital refueling architecture. This transporter features similar BE-7 propulsion and cryo-cooling systems that have been tested to keep liquid hydrogen at 20 Kelvin and liquid oxygen at 90 Kelvin in vacuum conditions.
China’s Chang’e-7 mission, also aiming for a 2026 launch, will dispatch an orbiter, lander, and rover, as well as a novel six-legged rocket-propelled hopper to investigate permanently shadowed craters. With the ability to climb, crawl, and conduct powered flight, the hopper will be able to jump over dozens of kilometers to reach terrain inaccessible to wheeled rovers. Carrying a Water Molecule and Hydrogen Isotope Analyzer, it will study the ice deposits presumed to have formed through cometary impacts, solar wind interactions, or primordial lunar generation. Such resources could be tapped for drinking water, oxygen production, and rocket fuel-the essentials for sustained lunar habitation.
These missions will play out under an increasingly active space weather environment. The Sun has just peaked in its 11-year cycle, and frequent eruptions have already occurred; a new solar wind observatory launched in late 2025 will further improve forecasting. According to NOAA’s Rob Steenburgh, “2026 will be an exciting year for space weather enthusiasts,” because increased solar monitoring will help predict geomagnetic storms, which can interfere with communications and spacecraft systems-most essential for missions operating at lunar distances. Engineering challenges for far side and polar exploration are considerable. Communications for the far side will have to rely on either relay satellites or incorporation with the Lunar Gateway, because there is no direct line-of-sight with Earth. Polar terrain brings hazards from steep-walled craters, boulder fields, and extreme thermal contrasts between sunlit and shadowed regions.
Precision landing systems must balance these variables, while mobility platforms-whether rovers or hoppers-must survive cryogenic temperatures in shadowed zones. At every turn, 2026 greets us with an auspicious conjunction of human and robotic exploration milestones: Artemis II’s reconnaissance over the far side, demonstrations of Blue Origin’s landers, and a Chinese hopper ready to probe the icy recesses of the Moon. For the space enthusiast tracking every maneuver and readout from instruments, these missions promise not just new data, but the opening of frontiers last seen only from a distance.
