NASA will spend 2026 shooting for the moon, with its ambitious plans marking the first time humans will fly out of low-Earth orbit since 1972.

The planned Artemis II launch is the highlight of what will be a busy year on the Space Coast, which just came off a record 109 launches at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The mission aims to fly from KSC as early as Feb. 5 and no later than April, sending its crew of four on a 10-day trip to ensure their ride, the Orion spacecraft, can support human spaceflight.

“We’re going to the moon. It has been an amazing journey the last two and a half years, and we really see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said NASA astronaut and mission commander Reid Wiseman. “We just do not anchor on dates. We are going to launch when this vehicle is ready, when this team is ready, and we are going to go execute this mission to the best of our abilities.”

The crew’s mission is to fly around, but not land on, the moon to pave the way for a future Artemis III mission that looks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17.

Joining Wiseman are NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Glover will become the first Black man, Koch the first woman and Hansen the first not from the USA to venture so far from Earth.

“This is just one step on a far grander journey,” said new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman earlier this month.

More moon missions

While humans will have to wait several more years to return, there are plenty of uncrewed moon landings planned for 2026.

Blue Origin, fresh off its successful November launch and booster landing of its New Glenn rocket, aims to fly its third-ever mission of its heavy-lift rocket with the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander in the front end of the year.

The lander, manufactured in Brevard County, is the precursor to the larger Mark 2 lander that has been tasked to support future Artemis human landing missions.

“This a lander that Blue Origin decided to make its own investment in to build that we can land on the moon,” said company vice president John Couluris. “It has a unique capability. It has the ability to land anywhere on the moon day or night. So our first mission is going to the South Pole.”

The mission falls under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which has seen four previous moonshot lander mission attempts since 2024: one from Astrobotic Technology, two from Intuitive Machines and one from Firefly Aerospace.

While Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s attempt with its Peregrine lander in 2024 never made it to the moon and both of Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ attempts, in 2024 and 2025 with its Nova-C lander, suffered from imperfect landings that limited mission success, Cedar Park, Texas-based Firefly was able to finally stick a perfect touchdown last year with its Blue Ghost lander.

All three will try their hand again in 2026.

Astrobotic’s large Griffin lander is set to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from KSC no earlier than July. Griffin is about five times bigger than Peregrine. As it heads to the South Pole’s Nobile Crater, the lander’s biggest payloads are the Venturi Astrolab FLIP rover and its own smaller rover in addition to secondary payloads for NASA, the European Space Agency and others.

Intuitive Machines could fly even earlier on its third attempt to stick the landing of its Nova-C lander on the IM-3 mission. It’s headed to the Reiner Gamma in the moon’s mid latitudes with payloads including autonomous robots, radiation sensors and a lunar plant experiment. It will fly from KSC on a SpaceX Falcon 9 along with the company’s first lunar data relay satellite, although a target launch date has yet to be announced.

Firefly will make its second trip to the moon with both its Blue Ghost lander as well as the Elytra Dark orbital vehicle headed for the far side of the moon. On board will be six government and commercial payloads. The first Blue Ghost mission flew on a Falcon 9, but the company has not announced its launch service provider or target launch date yet.

Return of Starliner

Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner spacecraft made its first trip to space with humans on board in summer 2024, but suffered helium leaks and thruster failures on its trip up to the International Space Station. Those issues ultimately led to NASA opting to keep its astronauts safe on board the station and send Starliner home without crew.

NASA and Boeing have since adjusted their original contract and are planning the spacecraft’s next flight, Starliner-1, to be cargo only in an effort to prove it can launch, dock and land safely with the latest fixes in place. That mission to the ISS is planned for no earlier than April, launching atop a ULA Atlas V from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41.

If successful, Boeing could then be chosen to work alongside SpaceX for the remainder of rotational crewed missions to the space station before its retirement planned for 2030.

Other human spaceflight

For now, SpaceX remains the only operational crew option for U.S.-based flights to the station. Its next rotational mission is Crew-12 aiming to fly as early as Feb. 15 to relieve Crew-11, which has been at the ISS since Aug. 2, 2025, amid an extended eight-month stay.

NASA and SpaceX had been flying the previous missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft for stays of about six months since the first operational flight in late 2020.

Flying on Crew-12 will be NASA astronaut and commander Jessica Meir, making her second trip to space, NASA astronaut and pilot Jack Hathaway on his debut spaceflight, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, also a rookie, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev making his second trip to space.

Debut of Starship?

While SpaceX aims to continue orbital test flights of its massive Starship and Super Heavy rocket from its Texas launch site, construction continues at both KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A and Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 37 on new launch towers to support Florida missions.

Space Force officials indicated they expect the first Starship to be on the Space Coast by summer with the KSC site as the intended first launch location. That site remains under an environmental impact review by the Federal Aviation Administration. The Canaveral site, which will have two launch towers, recently finished its review.

SpaceX’s plans call for as many as 120 launches of Starship per year, although those plans have brought public scrutiny, especially in how they could affect commercial air travel. Also of concern are the increased number and intensity of sonic booms as well as public space closures such as the beaches in Cape Canaveral.

The FAA would still have to issue launch licenses for the rocket, which has yet to make a successful orbital flight, and had two explosive endings to test flights from Texas in early 2025.

Recent flights, though, have proved successful and SpaceX aims to begin operational missions from Florida this year while continuing to construct a massive manufacturing site at KSC called the Gigabay, part of a $1.8 billion infrastructure investment on the Space Coast to support the Starship program.

More launches

Officials with Space Launch Delta 45, which oversees the Eastern Range, expect to come close to 2025’s record total in 2026 with up to 115 launches.

“We are breaking records on the launch manifest,” said SLD 45 commander Col. Brian Chatman. “We are getting capability on orbit that is essential to national security, and we’re doing that at a time of strategic challenge.”

That includes the continued high pace of SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, but also an increase in the number of missions flown by United Launch Alliance with its new Vulcan rocket and remaining Atlas V rockets.

ULA flew six missions in 2025, but that company’s leadership had indicated as many as 20 could be on tap for 2026.

Newcomer Blue Origin meanwhile looks to ramp up its New Glenn launch cadence building on the two launches it managed in 2025.

But wait, there’s more.

Long Beach, California-based Relativity Space has been redoing Launch Complex 16 to support what would be its second-ever rocket launch with the debut of its Terran R rocket.

Site construction will continue into the new year while the first launch is targeting late 2026.

The Washington-based Stoke Space has leased Launch Complex 14, the same site that sent John Glenn into space as the first American to reach orbit on the Friendship 7 spacecraft in 1962.

It spent most of 2025 building out the site with new infrastructure, and now it’s awaiting the completion of the first Nova rocket, which could also come before the end of the year.