CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration made history on Wednesday with a rocket launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
The spaceport’s countdown started at Launch Complex 39B ahead of NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis program to the moon.
The 10-day Artemis II moon flyby mission includes four astronauts traveling in the Orion spacecraft, which launched atop the Space Launch System rocket.
About an hour into the flight, the upper stage boosted the Orion capsule, Integrity, into a higher orbit.
Watch the launch below:
Three of the four Artemis II astronauts are from NASA: Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, a retired U.S. Navy veteran from Maryland; Victor Glover, a pilot from California; and Christina Koch, a mission specialist and engineer from Michigan.
The second Artemis II mission specialist is Jeremy Hansen, of the Canadian Space Agency. The pilot from Ontario spent a week in an Aquarius habitat off Key Largo to simulate deep-space exploration.
In late 2022, Artemis I successfully tested the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft.
More than three years later, the Artemis II mission workers chilled the SLS rocket again for the fueling phase.
There was a flow of super-cold propellant, and a slow flow of 700,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
While in the elliptical orbit around Earth, mission controllers in Houston took control of Orion, so the astronauts could check Orion’s systems.
“The sun is rising on Integrity,” Wiseman said.
Koch’s job was to make sure the toilet was functioning.
Once all of the systems’ checks were complete, the four-day trip that will extend more than 230,000 miles from Earth began.
Orion will trace a figure eight around the far side of the moon before returning home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
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