Artemis II Launches: First Humans Toward the Moon Since 1972

A towering orange-and-white rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday evening, carrying four astronauts toward the Moon for the first time since December 1972.

NASA's Artemis II mission launched at 6:18 PM EDT on April 1, sending commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day free-return trajectory around the Moon. The Orion capsule reached orbit within minutes, and flight controllers in Houston confirmed all four solar arrays deployed successfully.

"The nation, and the world, has been waiting a long time to do this again," Wiseman told reporters at Kennedy Space Center before entering quarantine.

What the mission will do

Artemis II will not land on the Moon. The crew will fly a looping trajectory that takes Orion more than 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the Moon — roughly 253,000 miles from Earth. If they reach that distance, they will break the record set by the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970.

The 10-day flight is primarily a test of systems that will carry later Artemis crews to the lunar surface. The astronauts will manually fly the Orion capsule, test life support and navigation systems, and assess how the spacecraft handles the radiation environment beyond Earth's magnetic field.

On Thursday, the critical translunar injection burn will fire Orion's engines to leave Earth orbit and begin the journey to the Moon. That manoeuvre is the point of no return — the first time humans will have committed to a deep-space trajectory since the Apollo programme ended.

Three firsts

Christina Koch will become the first woman to fly beyond low Earth orbit. Victor Glover will become the first person of colour to do so. Jeremy Hansen will be the first non-American to leave Earth orbit.

Before Donald Trump's return to office, NASA had celebrated the diversity of its Artemis crews. The agency dropped that recognition last year, following the president's executive order directing federal agencies to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion language.

Glover and Koch were careful to downplay their individual milestones in pre-flight interviews.

"It's not about celebrating any one individual," Koch said during the crew's final media briefing on Monday. "If there's something to celebrate, it's that we are at a time when anyone who has a dream gets to work equally hard to achieve that dream."

How regions covered it

Western media led with the human drama and the 54-year gap since Apollo 17. Chinese state media, according to CCTV, framed the launch within the context of its own Chang'e programme, noting that Artemis II does not include a landing while China's Chang'e 7 mission is scheduled for 2026. Indian media highlighted the mission's cost — over $90 billion for the Artemis programme to date — while noting that ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 achieved a soft landing for a fraction of that budget.

Arabic-language coverage was sparse. The mission competed for attention with Iran's largest missile barrage against Israel, launched the same evening.

What comes next

If Artemis II succeeds, NASA plans Artemis III — the first crewed lunar landing since 1972 — for late 2027 or early 2028, using a SpaceX Starship lunar lander. The long-term goal is a sustained human presence on the Moon, including the Gateway orbital station and a permanent surface base.

For now, four people are orbiting Earth in a capsule designed to take them further from home than any human has been before. On Thursday, they will fire the engine that commits them to the journey.