CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Humanity is on its way back to the moon.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (Commander), Victor Glover (Pilot), and Christina Koch (Mission Specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist) successfully launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at approximately 6:35 p.m on April 1 on their 10-day Artemis II mission around the moon and back.
This marked the first crewed flight of both NASA’s behemoth moon rocket, called the Space Launch System, and the Orion Crew Capsule. It will also be the first crewed test flight of the Orion’s service module, which was provided by the European Space Agency and contains power, environmental controls, and propulsion.
As the countdown expired, the rocket’s four core-stage engines and two solid rocket boosters were lit, lifting the four astronauts beyond their home planet with 8.8 million pounds of thrust—1 million pounds more than the Saturn V that came before it.
A great roar rose in volume as the controlled explosion pushed the vehicle into the Florida sky.
In less than 60 seconds, the moonship was supersonic. And after just eight minutes, the white solid rocket boosters and orange core stage burned all their fuel and fell back to Earth.
The rocket’s smaller, single-engine upper stage will then assume responsibility and place the Orion spacecraft into a unique, elongated elliptical high Earth orbit. It will complete its job a little more than two hours into the mission.
The NASA Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft blasts off at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 1, 2026. T.J. Muscaro/The Epoch Times
That orbit was gained by two burns of the upper stage that established the lowest point and highest point of the orbit.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and other leaders held a post-launch press conference, calling the launch a success, and said both burns of the engine were underway as planned.
