It is almost 54 years since the crew of Apollo 17 completed the final mission of the Apollo series, in December 1972, and the space sector has been waiting, since then, for someone to go back. In fact, the crew of Artemis II will only get within a few thousand kilometres of the lunar surface, as this mission is more concerned with verifying the hardware than exploration. So, in that sense, the mission is closer to Apollo 8, which looped around the Moon in December 1968.