Artemis II is unlikely to be the cultural touchstone Apollo 8 was, and that's OK

Artemis II launched four astronauts toward the Moon: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.

Apollo 8 in 1968 reached about a quarter of the then-global population and produced the iconic Earthrise image.

Preliminary estimates put NASA’s Artemis II livestream at about 16 million viewers, far fewer than Apollo 8’s relative reach.

Today's fragmented media environment and larger global population make a single unifying broadcast less likely.