NASA is back with a fun public engagement activity ahead of its crewed lunar mission Artemis II. Scheduled to launch no earlier than April 2026, with some reports suggesting as early as February, Artemis II will carry four astronauts along with hundreds of thousands of names as a symbolic payload to the Moon. Anyone around the world can submit their names to be included in this historic mission.
Next year, we’re going back to the Moon 🌕
Don’t forget to send your name to fly aboard the Orion spacecraft with the Artemis II crew: https://t.co/nVKTEM3wOT pic.twitter.com/Ajpb8iLbbu
— NASA Ames (@NASAAmes) December 26, 2025
How to submit your name?
NASA is collecting names via a portal which you can access here. Once you visit this page, click on sign up and submit your first and last name along a ZIP code of your area. Click submit and you’ll get a digital boarding pass for Artemis II with your name on it. You can then save it by clicking download.
The entries are only open until January 21, 2026 so sign up soon to join this lunar voyage!
NASA gave out the boarding passes for Artemis I as well in November 2022. These names are complied into a digital file and stored in a memory card which is then added to the payload.
About NASA’s Artemis II mission
Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 that launched in 1972. But unlike Apollo 17, Artemis II astronauts will not land on the Moon. The objective of the mission is to test the Orion spacecraft‘s reliability in deep space with humans onboard, so they’ll return in 10 days after completing a few orbits of the Moon.
The mission crew comprises Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist). Hansen is a Canadian astronaut whereas the other three are Americans.
Artemis II will be launched atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket which debut with Artemis I on November 16, 2022. The 322-feet-tall launch vehicle is the second most powerful operational rocket after Blue Origin’s New Glenn and third most powerful in terms of overall thrust. SpaceX’s Starship is currently the heaviest and most powerful but it’s still in the testing phase.
Meanwhile, the SLS rocket has been mated with the Orion spacecraft and it will soon roll out of the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Prior to the rollout, the Artemis II crew is carrying out pre-launch activities and recently completed a countdown demonstration test.
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