NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1, 2026. (Image credit: Josh Dinner) If you were sitting in Florida traffic after the April 1 launch of the historic Artemis 2 astronaut mission around the moon, that's because Space Coast tourism hit a big high. About 346,000 U.S. visitors — roughly the equivalent of the population of Honolulu, Hawaii — were in the northern half of Brevard County (on the Atlantic coast, near Orlando) between March 29 and April 4 during the Artemis 2 launch campaign, according to the Space Coast Office of Tourism. Artemis 2 sent four astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — on a 10-day loop around the moon. It was the first mission beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, when Apollo 17 put people down on the lunar surface. The historic launch brought a lot more people to Brevard County than comparable missions.…