Science

Four astronauts launched aboard NASA's most powerful rocket Wednesday evening, beginning humanity's first crewed journey to the moon in more than five decades. The Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT, sending Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day voyage around the moon.

The massive Space Launch System rocket, standing 322 feet tall, generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust as it carried the Orion crew capsule into Earth orbit. Approximately 400,000 spectators gathered along Florida's Space Coast to witness the thunderous departure, which marks the first crewed flight of NASA's new deep-space exploration system.

The crew will spend their first two days in Earth orbit conducting critical systems tests before departing for lunar space. Their most challenging task involves manually piloting Orion during docking simulations, preparing for scenarios where autonomous systems might fail. The astronauts will then embark on a figure-eight trajectory around the moon, traveling farther from Earth than any humans before them.