Four astronauts blasted off from Florida on Wednesday on NASA\u2019s Artemis II mission, a high-stakes voyage around the moon that marks the United \u200bStates\u2019 boldest step yet toward returning humans to the lunar surface later this decade in a race with China. NASA\u2019s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule, roared to \u200clife just before sunset at the agency\u2019s Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying its debut crew \u2014 three US astronauts and a Canadian astronaut \u2014 into Earth orbit. The 32-storey-tall space vehicle thundered into clear skies, trailing a towering column of thick, white vapour. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the launch was an opening act for subsequent missions that would include construction of a moon base to support the \u201cenduring presence we\u2019re trying to create on the surface.\u201d If the mission proceeds as planned, the crew consisting of \u200bNASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will fly around the moon and back in their nearly 10-day expedition, putting the spacecraft through its paces \u200bwhile venturing deeper into space than humans have ever gone. The mission is the debut crewed test flight in the Artemis program, successor to NASA\u2019s Cold War-era Apollo \u2060project, and the world\u2019s first to send astronauts in the vicinity of the moon, out of Earth\u2019s orbit, in 53 years. It serves as a crucial dress rehearsal for a NASA bid to land humans on \u200bthe lunar surface later this decade, after one more crewed mission around the moon. NASA is targeting 2028 for Artemis IV, a first-ever landing of astronauts on the moon\u2019s South Pole, seeking to beat China\u2019s planned crewed \u200bmission to the same lunar region as early as 2030. The last time astronauts walked on the moon – a feat so far achieved only by the United States – was the final Apollo mission in 1972. \u2018For all humanity\u2019 After nearly three years of training, the crew is the first to fly in NASA\u2019s Artemis program, a multibillion-dollar venture established in 2017 to build up a long-term US presence on the moon over the next decade and beyond, serving as a stepping stone to eventual missions to Mars. Minutes \u200bbefore liftoff, Canadian astronaut Hansen, strapped inside the gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, told mission control in Houston: \u201cThis is Jeremy, we are going for all humanity.\u201d Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said: \u201cReid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, on this historic mission, \u200byou take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation.\u201d \u201cGood luck, godspeed, Artemis II. Let\u2019s go,\u201d she added. A \u200cfew hours \u2060after liftoff, the SLS rocket\u2019s upper stage successfully separated from the Lockheed Martin-made Orion capsule and its propulsion module. The crew then began work on an early test objective: manually steering the spacecraft around the upper stage to demonstrate its manoeuvrability, should its default automated controls ever fail. Wednesday\u2019s launch was a major milestone more than a decade in the making for the U.S. space agency\u2019s SLS rocket, handing its principal contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman long-sought validation that the launch system was ready to safely loft humans into space. NASA has increasingly relied on newer, cheaper rockets from Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and others to send astronauts to low-Earth orbit. The success of the Artemis \u200bII flight so far provided positive talking points for \u200ba space agency that lost roughly 20% of \u2060its workforce under the Trump administration\u2019s federal downsizing efforts last year. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing,\u201d US President Donald Trump said of the launch during a national address about the Iran war. \u201cThey are on their way and God bless them, these are brave people. God bless those four unbelievable astronauts.\u201d Farthest trip in history The Artemis II mission will send its four-person crew \u200bsome 252,000 miles into space \u2014 the farthest humans have ever travelled. The current record for the farthest spaceflight at roughly 248,000 miles is held by the \u200bthree-man crew of the Apollo \u206013 lunar mission in 1970, which was beset by technical problems after an oxygen tank exploded and was unable to land on the moon as planned. NASA launched its first Artemis mission without crew in 2022, sending the Orion spacecraft on a similar path around the moon and back. Artemis II will pose a greater test of Orion as well as the SLS rocket, a programme partly known for its ballooning costs at an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion per launch. Musk\u2019s \u2060SpaceX and Jeff \u200bBezos\u2019 Blue Origin are racing to develop the landers that NASA will use to put its astronauts on the lunar surface. Artemis III \u200bhad been set to be the agency\u2019s first astronaut moon landing, but new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, in February, added an extra test mission before the landing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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