What to know for NASA’s Artemis II launch:
NASA’s Artemis II astronauts launched on a nine-and-a-half-day mission around the moon and back. The rocket lifted off Wednesday evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT. The spectacular launch marked the first piloted moonshot since the end of the Apollo program 53 years ago.
After separating from the other rocket components, the Orion crew capsule is now in high Earth orbit in preparation for a Thursday night engine firing that will send it on its way to the moon.
If all goes according to plan, the crew — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — will get an unprecedented view of the far side of the moon and set a record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth: 252,000 miles.
Artemis II is intended as a test flight to check out systems and equipment, laying the groundwork for future missions to land astronauts on the moon in 2028.
Source: reuters.com/science/nasa
