After years of postponements and close to $100 billion in spending, NASA has launched the first mission to send astronauts around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The 10-day Artemis 2 mission began today with the liftoff of NASA’s 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. ET (3:35 p.m. PT). NASA is streaming live coverage of the flight via YouTube and Amazon Prime.
During the last two hours of the countdown, engineers addressed concerns about the rocket’s flight termination system and instrumentation for a battery on the launch abort system. “Godspeed, Artemis 2,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told the crew just before liftoff. “Let’s go!”
Artemis 2 is the first crewed test flight in a series leading up to a moon landing that’s currently scheduled for 2028. It follows Artemis 1, which sent a crewless Orion around the moon in 2022. This time, four astronauts are riding inside Orion: NASA mission commander Reid Wiseman, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“Great view,” Wiseman told Mission Control during the rocket’s ascent. “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it.”
Koch will be the first woman to go beyond Earth orbit. Similar firsts apply to Glover as a Black astronaut, and Hansen as a non-American astronaut.
Although Artemis 2’s astronauts won’t be landing on the lunar surface, they’ll follow a figure-8 trajectory that will send them 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the moon and make them the farthest-flung travelers in human history.
