A 32-story Space Launch System rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday evening, sending four astronauts on Artemis II — the first crewed trip that far from Earth since 1972. Tens of thousands of people gathered along Cocoa Beach Pier, nearby beaches and roads to watch the rocket climb into a clear sky, recalling the era of Apollo launches.
The crewed mission will exercise the Orion spacecraft in an operational context: astronauts will test life-support systems, crew interfaces, communications and the vehicle’s handling as they periodically take manual control during a flight around the moon and back. The team includes NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The crew flew in from Houston after completing a two-week prelaunch quarantine.
Artemis II is the second flight in NASA’s Artemis program. Artemis I sent an uncrewed Orion on a lunar orbit and return in 2022. Under Artemis, NASA plans progressively more complex missions to study the moon and develop capabilities that could support eventual crewed missions to Mars. The agency aims for a crewed lunar landing near the moon’s south pole around 2028 and has longer-term goals of moving toward Mars in the 2030s or 2040s.
NASA led development of the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule and has contracted private companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to provide lunar landers for future Artemis missions. On Artemis II, launch procedures and spacecraft systems are being validated with humans aboard to demonstrate that systems perform as expected before later surface missions.
A key element of Orion is the European Service Module, built by Airbus in Bremen, Germany, for the European Space Agency. The ESM provides propulsion, electrical power, thermal control, water and oxygen for the crew. It uses 33 engines, including a repurposed Space Shuttle orbital maneuvering engine.
The planned test flight will last about 10 days and will carry the crew roughly 252,000 miles (406,000 km) from Earth — the farthest distance any humans have traveled. Artemis II does not include a lunar landing; it is a critical rehearsal and stepping stone toward establishing a sustained human presence on the moon.