KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—Three Americans and a Canadian rocketed into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday, flying the most powerful rocket ever assembled by humans on the first leg of a nine-day journey around the Moon.
Perched atop the 322-foot (98-meter)-tall Space Launch System rocket, the four astronauts lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT (22:35 UTC).
Four hydrogen-fueled RS-25 engines and two solid rocket boosters roared to life to push the nearly 6 million-pound rocket from its moorings at Launch Complex 39B. The engines and boosters collectively generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust, surpassing NASA’s Saturn V rocket used for the Apollo lunar missions.
Moments later, a wave of sound reached spectators a few kilometers away as the rocket rose into the sky, leaving an incandescent plume of fire and smoke in its wake.
Commander Reid Wiseman, a 50-year-old Navy captain and former test pilot, calmly radioed updates from the cockpit of the Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket. He was joined in the cockpit by pilot Victor Glover (another Navy captain), mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
In the spotlight
The launch of Artemis II is a key moment for NASA. The agency has spent nearly $100 billion on elements of the Artemis program over 20 years and now finds itself competing with China to return humans to the surface of the Moon. Artemis II is also making history in the annals of space exploration. Astronauts last left the Moon in 1972 and no one has returned since.
This mission will not land. That will have to wait until a future flight, currently planned for Artemis IV in 2028. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human-rated landers to transport crews between the Orion spacecraft and the lunar surface. Axiom Space is developing new spacesuits for astronauts to wear on the Moon.
Artemis II is testing the transportation system that NASA plans to use to take astronauts from Earth to the Moon and then return the crews home at the end of their mission. The first major milestone was Wednesday’s successful launch, which set the stage for manual piloting demonstrations, trajectory correction maneuvers, life support system checks and, finally, a circuit of thousands of miles beyond the back side of the Moon.
