NASA/Robert Markowitz
The Artemis II crew — Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Victor Glover — poses in front of an Orion simulator Jan. 23, 2026 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The four astronauts set to head to the moon in the Artemis II mission are now in quarantine in Houston, NASA announced, in preparation for a potential February launch.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are quarantining in what’s called the “health stabilization program,” NASA said in a recent news release.
The 14-day quarantine, though, is not so draconian as most quarantines.
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“During quarantine, the crew can continue regular contact with friends, family, and colleagues who are able to observe quarantine guidelines,” NASA said, “and will avoid public places, wear masks, and maintain distance from others they come into contact with as they continue their final training activities.”
The Artemis II astronauts entered quarantine at the end of last week so they don’t pick up any illness that could delay their mission.
The official launch date will be confirmed after our wet dress rehearsal at the end of the month. https://t.co/6v3kwFYoSS pic.twitter.com/9m7uxQZin3
— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) January 26, 2026
“And just like that, it is time to go into quarantine,” Wiseman said in a video shared by NASA on X. “Great final week with all of our favorite instructors going through all of our operations and procedures. Everything is ready to rock and roll.”
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Artemis II is set to be the first manned flight to the moon in more than half a century. The mission will launch as soon as February from a powerful rocket known as a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft attached. The spacecraft will orbit the Earth twice before heading to the moon, where it will orbit once and go further than humans have ever been before returning to Earth.
The quarantine comes two weeks before the earliest possible launch date for the astronauts, on Feb. 6. NASA has not set a launch date and is awaiting the results of a “wet dress rehearsal” in the coming days before doing so.
If the potential launch dates in February — the 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th — go without a launch, the crew can come out of quarantine and reenter 14 days before the next potential flights in March or April.
About six days prior to launch, the crew will leave Houston and fly to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The crew will live in the astronaut crew quarters and continue training in the days leading up to the mission.
The central task NASA will undertake in preparation for the launch of Artemis II is a wet dress rehearsal, which will take place toward the end of the month, administrators said in a Jan. 9 news release.
NASA labels the run-through as a “wet” dress rehearsal because crews will actually load fuel into the rocket as opposed to just going through the motions.
The wet dress rehearsal will take the Artemis II crew — without astronauts — through the launch-day protocols up to about 30 seconds until launch. That includes loading more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, conducting the countdown, and removing propellant from the rocket.