Artemyev was born in Riga, Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, present-day Latvia, on December 28, 1970, and grew up in Leninsk (now Baikonur), Kazakhstan.

In 1998, he graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a degree in Low Temperature Technology and Physics.

[1] At RKKE he was involving in developing testing procedures for Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) equipment in neutral buoyancy at the hydrodynamics laboratory, Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Artemyev was a member of the pre-launch processing team of the Zvezda Service Module working on the EVA and teleoperation control system.

In 2000, he received medical clearance to begin special training related to space flight operation.

The mission launched on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on March 25, 2014, and returned to Earth on September 11, 2014.