Artemis II and India's space year: explained simply

What happened

NASA's Artemis II launched on 1 April 2026 from Kennedy Space Center on the SLS rocket, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen on a lunar flyby, the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 (1972). On 6 April the crew passed the Apollo 13 distance record, reaching about 406,771 km from Earth; Orion splashed down off San Diego on 10 April. PSLV-C62 failed on 12 January, the second PSLV failure in a row, but Skyroot's Vikram-1 became India's first private rocket to reach orbit on 18 July, Chandrayaan-3 won the AIAA Goddard Astronautics Award, Gaganyaan tests continued ahead of the uncrewed G1 flight, and the Artemis Accords reached 71 signatories as of August 2026.

Why it matters

Space is a favourite science-and-technology topic because it produces clean facts: mission names, dates, crews, records and agencies. Artemis II is the first crewed Moon mission in more than fifty years, so it could be paired with Apollo questions. India's entries (first private orbital launch, a launcher failure, Gaganyaan milestones, the running count of Artemis Accords signatories) are the kind examiners turn into match-the-pair items.

Timeline

18 Dec2025
ISRO and DRDO qualify the Gaganyaan crew module's drogue parachutes in sled tests at TBRL, Chandigarh, a step towards the uncrewed G1 mission; the deceleration system has 10 parachutes of four types
24 Dec2025
LVM3-M6 launches AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird Block-2 (about 6,100 kg) from Sriharikota under an NSIL commercial deal, the heaviest payload LVM3 has put in low Earth orbit
12 Jan2026
PSLV-C62 fails after a third-stage anomaly, losing EOS-N1 (Anvesha) and 15 other satellites; it is the second consecutive PSLV failure after PSLV-C61 in May 2025, both in the third stage; ISRO said a detailed analysis had been initiated
26 Jan2026
Oman signs the Artemis Accords in Muscat as the 61st signatory
24 Mar2026
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the Lunar Gateway station will be paused to focus on a lunar surface base
1 Apr2026
Artemis II launches from Kennedy Space Center on the SLS; on 6 April the crew passes the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles, peaking at about 252,756 miles (406,771 km); Orion splashes down off San Diego on 10 April
8 Apr2026
ISRO releases the Indian Space Situational Awareness Report 2025 at SMOPS-2026 in Bengaluru: 328 launch attempts worldwide in 2025 and 14 collision-avoidance manoeuvres for Indian satellites in low Earth orbit
21 May2026
Chandrayaan-3 receives the 2026 AIAA Goddard Astronautics Award in Washington DC for its 2023 lunar south-pole landing; ambassador Vinay Kwatra accepts it for ISRO
10 Jun2026
Reported in June: NASA names the Artemis III crew (Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and ESA's Luca Parmitano) for a 2027 Earth-orbit docking test with commercial landers, not a lunar landing
10 Jun2026
IN-SPACe invites Indian companies to take on full realisation, operation and commercialisation of the LVM3 launch vehicle, as reported on 10 and 11 June; ISRO plans to transfer mature launch-vehicle technology to industry
14 Jul2026
ISRO completes crew-module uprighting, umbilical separation and apex-cover tests and the IMAT-05 main parachute air-drop at Sheopur (7 July) ahead of the uncrewed Gaganyaan G1 mission, targeted for 2026 with no launch date confirmed
18 Jul2026
Skyroot Aerospace's four-stage Vikram-1 reaches orbit on its maiden launch (Mission Aagaman) from Sriharikota, India's first private orbital launch
21 Aug2026
IN-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka says ISRO will eventually stop making launch vehicles, leaving production to private firms and PSUs; SSLV technology is already being transferred to HAL
23 Aug2026
Third National Space Day held in Ahmedabad, theme 'Towards Viksit Bharat: Innovating, Collaborating and Aspiring to Global Space Leadership', marking Chandrayaan-3's landing on 23 August 2023
31 Aug2026
Turkiye signs the Artemis Accords at NASA headquarters as the 71st signatory
14 Oct2026
ISRO and France's CNES plan TRISHNA, a thermal-infrared Earth observation satellite, for 2027 (Indian officials say 2027 or early 2028)

Words to know

Artemis programme: NASA's programme to return humans to the Moon and land near the lunar south pole. Artemis II (April 2026) was a crewed flyby; Artemis III is planned as a 2027 Earth-orbit docking test, not a landing. Apollo 17 in December 1972 was the last crewed lunar landing.
Artemis Accords: US-led, non-binding principles for civil space exploration, launched in 2020. India signed in June 2023 as the 27th signatory; Oman became the 61st in January 2026 and Turkiye the 71st in August 2026.
PSLV: Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, ISRO's workhorse, which launched Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and the Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013 and set a record of 104 satellites in one launch in February 2017. PSLV-C61 (May 2025) and PSLV-C62 (January 2026) both failed in the third stage.
LVM3: ISRO's heavy launcher, earlier called GSLV Mk III, which launched Chandrayaan-3 in 2023. In June 2026 IN-SPACe invited Indian industry to take over its production.
Gaganyaan: India's human spaceflight programme, announced in 2018, to carry a crew to low Earth orbit at about 400 km. G1 is the first uncrewed flight, planned to carry the humanoid Vyommitra. Rakesh Sharma was India's first person in space in 1984; Shubhanshu Shukla flew to the ISS on Axiom-4 in 2025.
Skyroot and Vikram-1: Skyroot Aerospace is India's first private rocket launcher; its suborbital Vikram-S flew in November 2022 and Vikram-1 reached orbit in July 2026. The Vikram series is named for Vikram Sarabhai.
National Space Day: Observed on 23 August, the date of Chandrayaan-3's 2023 landing at Shiv Shakti Point, when India became the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon and the first near the lunar south pole. ISRO was founded in 1969, succeeding INCOSPAR (1962).
IN-SPACe and NSIL: IN-SPACe, chaired by Pawan Goenka, invited industry in June 2026 to take over LVM3 production and says ISRO will move out of launch-vehicle manufacturing. NSIL, set up in 2019, is ISRO's commercial arm, which handled the BlueBird Block-2 launch deal.

What an exam could ask

The Artemis II crew, launch date and the Apollo 13 distance record could be asked, with Apollo 17 (1972) as the last crewed landing.
India's position among Artemis Accords signatories (27th, June 2023) and the latest signatory count could be asked.
A match-the-pair question could be asked pairing PSLV-C62, Vikram-1, LVM3-M6 and Gaganyaan G1 with a launch failure, India's first private orbital launch, LVM3's heaviest low-Earth-orbit payload and the planned first uncrewed Gaganyaan flight.
National Space Day's date, its 2026 theme and venue, and the Chandrayaan-3 landing site name could be asked.
The award given to Chandrayaan-3 in 2026 (AIAA Goddard Astronautics Award) could be asked as an awards item.

Angles to revise, not predictions.

Sources

Written from verified news. Errors can occur: verify important facts with official sources.