The 'Earthset' photo from the Artemis II crew's lunar flyby in April 2026.  NASA

With the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission on April 1, 2026, human beings have finally returned to the Moon for the first time in 50 years – since the age of Apollo.

When Apollo 11 first landed on the lunar surface, the astronauts portrayed their accomplishment as the realization of a science fictional dream. In a televised broadcast during their return, Neil Armstrong explicitly evoked Jules Verne’s 1865 novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” calling his spaceship and crew a “modern-day Columbia” – a direct reference to the spaceship Verne imagined taking off in from Florida and landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Originally published on theconversation.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.