About This Tracker

What is Artemis II?

Artemis II is NASA's first crewed mission around the Moon in over 50 years. Four astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen — will fly aboard the Orion spacecraft on a roughly 10-day lunar flyby mission, traveling approximately 400,000 km from Earth.

Data Sources

NASA AROW (Artemis Real-time Orbit Website)

Primary source for mission-specific live data including Orion's position, distance from Earth and Moon, and mission elapsed time. This is NASA's official real-time tracking platform for Artemis missions.

JPL Horizons API

Source of truth for Moon, Earth, and Sun positions. Used to derive geometry that AROW does not directly expose. Provides high-precision ephemerides and state vectors for solar system bodies.

Methodology

Every displayed metric falls into one of three categories:

  • Direct — Values taken directly from official sources (AROW), displayed as-is.
  • Derived — Computed from official state vectors using standard physics formulas.
  • Curated — Static mission metadata maintained in the application.

Formulas Used

Distance: |r_orion - r_body|

Altitude: distance - body_mean_radius

Relative speed: |v_orion - v_body|

Light time: distance_km / 299,792.458

Acceleration: (v2 - v1) / dt

Constants

Earth mean radius: 6,371.0 km

Moon mean radius: 1,737.4 km

Speed of light: 299,792.458 km/s

Disclaimer

This tracker is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA or JPL. While we use official data sources, derived metrics are computed by this application and may differ from official NASA values. Always refer to NASA's official channels for authoritative mission information.