NASA launches four astronauts toward the Moon on the Artemis II mission

NASA’s Artemis II flight, which is set to take four astronauts toward the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, successfully launched on Wednesday evening.

The Artemis II mission, part of NASA’s Artemis program that’s intended to bring humans back onto the Moon as early as 2028, will bring the four astronauts in orbit around the Moon on the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will make the trip aboard the Orion crew capsule, and the full mission is expected to be a 10-day journey. The mission was delayed in February due to a helium supply issue.

NASA recently pushed back its plans for a Moon landing, shifting the planned 2027 Artemis III mission from a Moon landing to a test flight. Instead, the Artemis IV mission, set for 2028, will be the next planned attempt to land on the Moon. The last time NASA landed on the Moon was during 1972’s Apollo 17 mission. Artemis I, an uncrewed mission where the SLS launched the Orion capsule around the moon, took place in 2022.

As I write this, NASA is livestreaming the Artemis II launch on Twitch and YouTube and live-blogging about it on the NASA website, if you want to follow along.