NASA's Artemis II launches with four astronauts toward lunar orbit
The Space Launch System rocket carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen lifted off Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center for a ten-day mission orbiting the Moon.
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NASA's Artemis II mission launched Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying four astronauts on a ten-day journey to orbit the Moon for the first time in more than fifty years.
The Space Launch System rocket lifted off at 18:24 local time (19:24 Argentine time) with Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard the Orion spacecraft. The crew is scheduled to return to Earth on April 14.
Wiseman, 50, is a former U.S. Navy test pilot who joined NASA in 2009. He previously spent 165 days aboard the International Space Station in 2014 as a flight engineer on Expedition 40. Glover and Koch are NASA astronauts, while Hansen represents the Canadian Space Agency and will become the first non-American citizen to travel beyond low Earth orbit.
The mission validates the life support systems of the Orion capsule in deep space and marks the first crewed flight of the Artemis program following the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022. The flight will demonstrate capabilities necessary for deep space missions without landing on the lunar surface.
Before launch, the crew received a final weather briefing at 12:40 local time at the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center. They donned their spacesuits and boarded the spacecraft at Launch Complex 39B. NASA confirmed the two-hour launch window after completing technical reviews of the Space Launch System rocket.
The mission includes secondary payloads from international partners. Argentina's Atenea microsatellite, developed by the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE) in collaboration with universities and scientific institutions, is aboard the rocket. Fernando Filippetti, director of the ASTAR project and head of the Engineering Faculty at the University of Buenos Aires, confirmed Argentina's participation as the only Latin American country involved in the mission.
The Artemis II crew represents a departure from the Apollo era. The mission includes the first woman, the first Black astronaut, and the first non-American to participate in a lunar mission of this type. The approximately ten-day flight will carry the crew around the Moon and back to Earth, testing the systems and procedures for future deep space exploration.