Shadowing Practice: Artemis II Explained | 2026 Mission to the Moon - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Artemis II is NASA's mission to the Moon, launching in early 2026.
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It'll be the first time that humans have visited the Moon in over 50 years, but it's more like a test flight.
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Four astronauts will fly to the far side of the Moon on a 10 -day journey, using the most powerful manned rocket to date.
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Today, I'm going to break down Artemis II for you in three parts.
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The spacecraft, the mission, and the crew.
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so let's go Before we get to the mission, I want to explain the Artemis II spacecraft real quick.
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So the whole rocket that they're using is called the Space Launch System, or usually just called the SLS.
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It has two solid rocket boosters on both sides, a lot like the space shuttle, and an orange core stage in the middle.
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On Artemis II, the solid rocket boosters have something that make them really unique.
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They have a giant America 250 logo painted on top of
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both of them to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, which is in 2026.
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Pretty cool, especially considering that this rocket was made by engineers from every state in the United States.
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The next rocket stage is called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS.
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Above that is the upper stage, Orion.
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Orion is really the star of this rocket, and it has a few major sections too.
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This bottom section is the European Service Module, or ESM, and it provides power and propulsion.
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It's the way that Orion gets around in space.
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Then there's the Crew Module, sometimes called the Capsule.
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This is where the astronauts live and work.
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In fact, astronauts will stay in this capsule the entire mission.
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On Artemis II, the crew have named their capsule Integrity.
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When the entire mission is done, this capsule is the only part that will return back to Earth.
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And finally, this top tower bit is called the Launch Abort System or LAS.
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Hopefully, the astronauts won't need it, but if they do, it can actually pull the capsule away from the rest of the rocket
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if there was a major malfunction or an explosion and hopefully on its lives.
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If you want to learn more about the SLS, I have a whole video about that right here.
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Now that we know our spacecraft, let's talk about the Artemis 2 mission specifically.
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As I mentioned before, Artemis 2 is a test mission.
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Artemis 1, the first test of the space launch system, it launched back in 2022 and was an amazing success.
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But Artemis 1 was uncrewed.
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Now it's time to test this full system with crew on board.
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And this crew is going to be able to test out a lot more of the human -centric features.
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Docking, radiation shielding, communication, The four of us will gather to share meals
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when we're on our nine -day trip around the moon.
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Inside here, our device that we owe to a portion of water to fill up water bags for us to drink, but also to rehydrate the food.
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Sleeping, exercise.
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This is the flywheel device.
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What I kind of want you to imagine is a rowing machine.
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So we can do rowing like a cardiovascular workout.
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We can do weightlifting with it.
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So we can do squats.
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We can do deadlifts.
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We can do curls.
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Varied levels of resistance.
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It's really quite a lot of stress on our muscles and our bones.
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Going to the bathroom.
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Inside the capsule, this would be the floor.
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You would float over to it, open up this hinging door, float on in.
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Artemis II will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida from Launchpad 39B.
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Launchpad 39B launched Apollo 10 to the moon in the 1960s and many shuttle missions, including this shuttle mission that I got to see launch when I was a kid.
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And it will launch as early as February 5th, 2026.
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And when the countdown hits zero, it's going to be the most powerful manned rocket launch in history.
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Two minutes into launch, we're going to jettison the solid rocket boosters
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and be left just with the Corsage powering it into low Earth orbit.
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And this is when the launch abort system will be jettisoned as well.
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Eight minutes in, the core stage is out of fuel.
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And so it's going to separate and fall back to Earth, while the second stage, the ICPS, ignites and gives the final push to get the crew into space.
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After two burns, the ICPS is going to have Orion in an elliptical high Earth orbit.
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And so now Orion is going to be 46 ,000 miles away from Earth on the far side, and the close side of its orbit is going to be 115 miles from Earth.
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And this orbit will take about one day to complete.
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day Orion is going to separate from the ICPS and begin to do a docking practice maneuver.
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In the coming years Orion will dock with the lunar lander and the Gateway Station.
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So we need to know how well does the autopilot work?
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Do the thrusters work the way we expect them to?
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If you remember the two astronauts who were stuck in space for a while, Butch and Sunny, last year, they were testing out a new spacecraft called Starliner.
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And the whole reason that NASA kept them on the space station for months instead of weeks was because of bad thrusters.
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We need to make sure Orion does not have similar issues.
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Once Orion passes back by the Earth, it's going to reignite its engine for the Translunar Injection, or TLI.
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This is the final push to get our astronauts to the Moon for a free return trajectory.
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What is a free return trajectory, you may ask?
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It means the gravity of the Moon and the Earth will naturally bring Artemis II back home.
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No additional burns required.
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This is a great idea for a test spacecraft like Orion.
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If anything goes wrong with Artemis II, it'll just naturally come back to Earth using gravity alone.
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after their disaster on the way to the moon.
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For Artemis 2, the journey to the moon is going to take four days.
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During that time, the crew is going to be running emergency procedures, including what to do in case of a major radiation event.
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See, if humans are going to do these long missions that we're talking about, like going to the moon or maybe one day going to Mars, we have to figure out how to deal with deep space radiation.
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Orion has a shelter on board and the astronauts are going to test and see how effective it is in actual use.
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Alright, so as I mentioned before, Artemis 2 is not a lunar landing.
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The astronauts are not going to be walking on the moon for this mission.
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This is a lunar flyby mission.
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If you're at all familiar with the Apollo 8 mission from the 1960s, that's the Christmas Apollo flight, this mission is really similar.
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Their flight is going to take them 230 ,000 miles away from the earth to the far side of the moon.
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As you may already know, there's a side of the moon that always faces the earth,
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and then there's a far side of the moon that we will never see from astronauts.
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This is a simulation of what that flyby mission for Artemis II is going to look like.
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This is actually what the astronauts will see.
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The closest the astronauts will get to the lunar surface is about 4 ,600 miles.
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After the flyby, Orion will do any necessary little corrections
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that it needs to to land precisely at the right place and the right time back on Earth.
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After another four days, Integrity will separate from the ESM and re -enter the atmosphere for splashdown.
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10 -day mission.
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Alright so let's talk about the crew.
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There are four astronauts on board Artemis 2.
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Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.
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As you might guess these four people are exceptional.
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Some of the best of the best.
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The exact people you would pick on an Artemis 2 mission.
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I'm gonna highlight just a couple of things
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that stood out to me about each one of their bios but seriously you need to go read them.
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I've linked them all in the description of this things in their lifetimes.
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Reid Wiseman will serve as the commander for Artemis II.
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He is a 27 -year Navy veteran, a pilot, a father, an engineer, and a Baltimore native.
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Wiseman has been an astronaut since 2009 and he's logged 167 days in space.
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Victor Glover will be the pilot for Artemis II.
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He's a test pilot, a legislative fellow with the United States Senate, a father, and an engineer from California.
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He served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and has flown 40 aircraft across 24 missions and Glover has been an astronaut since 2013.
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Christina Koch is a mission specialist on Artemis II.
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She's an electrical engineer, an Antarctic explorer, a firefighter, and has worked on major scientific programs for both NASA and NOAA.
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She grew up on a family farm in Michigan and attended North Carolina State University.
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She's been an astronaut since 2013 and holds the record as the woman with the longest single space flight, almost a full year.
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And finally we have Jeremy Hansen.
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Hansen is a Canadian astronaut and he will be a mission specialist for Artemis II.
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He's a pilot, a physicist, a colonel with the Canadian military, an aquanaut, and a father.
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He first got his wings when he was just 16 years old
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astronaut in 2009 and in 2017 he became the first Canadian astronaut to lead a NASA astronaut class.
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And get this, Artemis II is gonna be Hanson's first spaceflight.
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You can't really beat a trip to the moon as your first flight in space.
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So that's the crew.
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Four incredible astronauts who are gonna be able to test out everything for future missions
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and be our first return to the moon in over five decades.
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So the big question: when is Artemis II happening?
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Very soon.
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The first launch Now, it took Artemis 1 a couple of launch attempts before NASA got everything working properly.
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But the result of that attention to detail and that patience was a very successful flight.
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And this time, Artemis 2 has actual humans on board.
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So don't be surprised if there are a couple of scrubbed launch attempts over the next couple months.
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Me and my family are hoping to be there for launch.
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hopefully with some of you guys.
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And if you are as excited for the Artemis 2 launch as I am, be sure to check out all of the Artemis 2 shirts
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and merch that I have put out on my digital astronaut Etsy shop, like this one, available now.
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Be sure to like and subscribe, and you can check out my other Artemis videos right here.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 133 sentences and 1811 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:52. The speaker talks fast, about 184 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| astronaut noun | /ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/ | A member of the crew of a spaceship or other spacecraft that travels beyond Earth's atmosphere, or someone trained to serve that purpose. |
| rocket noun | /ˈɹɑk.ɪt/ | A cylindrical projectile that can be fired to a great height through combustion, (specifically) a type of firework of this form, typically exploding with light… |
| capsule noun | /ˈkæps(ə)l/ | A membranous envelope. |
| spacecraft noun | /ˈspeɪsˌkɹæft/ | A vehicle that travels through space. |
| orbit noun | /ˈɔɹ.bɪt/ | An elliptical movement of an object about a celestial object or Lagrange point, especially a periodic elliptical revolution. |
| lunar adjective | /ˈlunɚ/ | Of, pertaining to, or resembling the Moon (that is, Luna, the Earth's moon). |
| radiation noun | /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/ | The shooting forth of anything from a point or surface, like diverging rays of light. |
| dock noun | /dɑk/ | A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port; usually for loading and unloading. |
| shuttle noun | /ˈʃʌtəl/ | A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom. |
| booster noun | /ˈbustɚ/ | Something that boosts. |
| naturally adverb | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | In a natural manner. |
| specialist noun | /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/ | Someone who is an expert in, or devoted to, some specific branch of study or research. |
| gravity noun | /ˈɡɹævɪti/ | Of an activity such as a ceremony, a person's conduct, etc.: the quality of being deeply serious and solemn, especially in a dignified manner; seriousness… |
| float verb | /fləʊt/ | To be supported by a fluid of greater density (than the object). |
| trajectory noun | /tɹəˈd͡ʒɛktəɹi/ | The path an object takes as it moves. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| fill up verb | To make (something) completely full. |
| open up verb | To open. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have visited · have named · I've linked |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · was made · was uncrewed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 16 contractions and reduced forms, such as gonna, we're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thruster /ˈθɹʌ.stɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, shuttle /ˈʃʌtəl/, specialist /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/, shield /ˈʃild/, shelter /ˈʃɛltə/
- Long words — get the stress right: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, trajectory /tɹəˈd͡ʒɛktəɹi/, electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/, legislative /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ɪ.slə.tɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like astronaut, rocket, capsule.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.