The Artemis 2 mission was a historic success that went far beyond the moon flight. According to data released by the Space Coast Office of Tourism on May 7, 2026, the mission transformed Florida’s Space Coast into one of the most visited places on Earth.
About 346,000 U.S. visitors traveled to northern Brevard County for the Artemis 2 launch campaign. The number of visitors was approximately equal to the entire population of Honolulu, Hawaii.
In line with the data collection, the Space Coast Office of Tourism collected these numbers using mobile device tracking software to monitor adults traveling from outside the region.
The actual crowd was likely much larger, as the tracking did not count international visitors, children, people without phones or locals.
“This does not apply to long-distance telephone companies, children, people without phones, phones that were turned off, or residents of Brevard County,” the office said in an emailed statement.
The ten-day mission sent four astronauts – Reid Wiseman (NASA), Victor Glover (NASA), Christina Koch (NASA) and Jeremy Hansen (CSA) – on a historic loop around the moon.
This was the first crewed mission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The unmanned Artemis 1 launch into lunar orbit in November 2022 generated 226,000 visitors, according to the Space Coast Office of Tourism.
Conversely, a typical Artemis 2 visitor spent two days on the coast and mobile software showed an average spend of $462. These figures were calculated using mobile tracking data and extrapolated from individual tourism surveys.
