Four astronauts lifted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard NASA’s Artemis II, a high-stakes crewed flight around the moon that advances the United States’ push to return humans to the lunar surface this decade. The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped by the Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew capsule, streaked away from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral just before sunset, carrying three U.S. astronauts and one Canadian into Earth orbit amid a towering plume of vapor.
Described by NASA leadership as the opening act for later missions that aim to establish an enduring presence on the moon, Artemis II will send Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a nearly 10-day journey to test spacecraft systems and operations farther from Earth than humans have gone in more than half a century. If all goes to plan, the crew will loop around the moon and return, validating Orion and the SLS as crew-capable systems.
Artemis II is the first crewed test flight in NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, and the first mission to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit in 53 years. It serves as a critical rehearsal for planned lunar landings later this decade. NASA is targeting Artemis IV, currently slated for 2028, for the first landing at the moon’s south pole — a goal positioned in part to precede a Chinese crewed mission that Beijing has discussed for as early as 2030. The last U.S. moonwalk was in 1972 under Apollo.
Minutes before liftoff, Hansen, strapped into the gumdrop-shaped Orion, radioed mission control: “This is Jeremy, we are going for all humanity.” Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson praised the Artemis team, partners and a new generation before sending the crew off with: “Good luck, godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go.”
Hours after launch, the SLS upper stage separated from Orion and its propulsion module. The crew then performed an early demonstration of contingency capability, manually steering Orion around the disconnected upper stage to show they could maneuver if automated systems failed.
The mission is a milestone for SLS after more than a decade of development, validating major contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman and demonstrating the system can carry humans. NASA has increasingly relied on lower-cost commercial rockets, like those from SpaceX, for low-Earth orbit missions; Artemis II showcases the heavy-lift capability SLS provides even as agencies and industry wrestle with budgets and workforce changes.
Artemis II will travel about 252,000 miles (406,000 km) from Earth — slightly farther than the roughly 248,000-mile record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I made a similar lunar loop in 2022. The program’s costs have been high, with estimates of $2–4 billion per launch for SLS and Orion, and NASA is evaluating commercial lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin for future surface missions. Administrator Jared Isaacman added an extra crewed test mission in February before committing to a settlement landing schedule, making Artemis II a vital step on the way back to the moon.
