NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission Launches, Sending Humans Toward the Moon for the First Time in More Than 50 Years

For the first time in more than 50 years, humans have blasted off toward the moon.

Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft launched on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the highly anticipated Artemis 2 mission, a ten-day trip in which they’ll loop around Earth’s natural satellite. Although the crew won’t set foot on the moon, the journey will help the space agency prepare for Artemis 4, a mission planned for 2028 that’s expected to put people on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

“Artemis 2 is the opening act” for the rest of the program, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said about half an hour before launch in a NASA livestream. “No humans have ever flown on [Orion] before, right? And we’re going to put it through its paces.” 

The spacecraft lifted off amid a breezy, sunny evening, followed by cheers and applause from onlookers in Florida.

Orion—propelled by the powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket—is carrying NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The foursome will orbit the Earth twice, then slingshot around the moon. You can track their journey in real time on NASA’s website.

On April 6, they’ll see the far side of the moon from roughly 5,000 miles away. At that distance, the orb will appear similar in size to a basketball held at arm’s length, Jeff Radigan, NASA’s lead Artemis 2 flight director, said during a September press briefing. The crew, he added, will possibly travel “farther past the moon than anyone’s gone before.” The astronauts will get views of the lunar surface that no one has ever seen with their own eyes.

The launch follows a series of delays. Artemis 2’s launch window initially opened in early February, but it slid to March after liquid hydrogen leaks emerged during a tanking test, and helium flow issues pushed it once more to April. The latter problem required the rocket and crew capsule to be rolled back from the launch pad to the vehicle assembly building (VAB) for repairs.

The team worked quickly to “transition from preparations for launch to preparations for rollback,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said during a February 27 press briefing, while the problematic pieces were being fixed. Experts had to “streamline a plan for the work inside the VAB to give us the very best possible chance at a launch in the early April launch period.”

They succeeded.

When the astronauts reach the moon’s vicinity, they’ll spend approximately three hours snapping photos and gathering data on the geology of the far side, such as impact craters and evidence of ancient lava flows. They’ll even keep an eye out for potential landing sites for upcoming missions, Mark Clampin, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a science and technology press briefing in September.

The crew members are also participating in several studies investigating space’s impacts on health. One experiment involves tissue samples from each of them in USB-sized chips, which are aboard Orion and will help researchers investigate how increased radiation and microgravity may affect human organs. Additionally, each astronaut is wearing a wrist monitor to track their sleep patterns, activity levels, interactions and well-being, and they’ll lick special paper to collect saliva samples, which can provide insights into how their immune systems fare in space. 

Ultimately, the knowledge gained about spaceflight technology, lunar geology and human health will help with the United States’ goals of establishing a long-term presence on the moon and eventually getting people to Mars.

The Artemis program was formally established in 2017, when the Trump administration directed NASA to return humans to the lunar surface, in the hopes of laying the foundation for reaching the Red Planet. The program’s first mission, Artemis 1, involved a 25-day uncrewed flight test of Orion and the SLS. It launched in November 2022, after a multiyear delay.

Artemis 2’s timeline has also been stretched by several years; the mission was originally supposed to take place in 2024. The postponement largely came as engineers worked to resolve problems with Orion that were revealed during Artemis 1. The first mission’s main goal was to show that the capsule’s heat shield would hold up during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, which exposes the spacecraft to scorching temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But when researchers inspected the shield after splashdown, they found unexpected damage. During Artemis 2, Orion will follow a different trajectory to the planet’s surface, which NASA says will reduce the time spent in extreme temperatures and prevent the problem.

In February, NASA announced a shake-up of the Artemis program, in which Artemis 3—initially planned to land humans on the moon’s surface—would become an intermediary mission to low-Earth orbit. It will test Orion’s capabilities for meeting up and docking with one or both lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, which will ultimately carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon on a later mission. Artemis 3 is now slated for 2027.

If all goes to plan with the current mission and the new version of Artemis 3, the agency aims to attempt up to two crewed moon landings in 2028, and the first is expected to touch down near the orb’s mysterious south pole. NASA plans to eventually launch Artemis missions roughly every ten months and establish a base camp on the moon by the 2030s.