Karla Carrillo contacted multiple organizations before she was able to find stable housing for her and her daughter. One South L.A. effort is working to make it easier for families in crisis to get the help they need.
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A group of organizations in South L.A. has been working to create a one-stop shop for families. Partners for Children South L.A. (PCSLA), whose acronym is pronounced “PEACE-lah,” created what they call the Early Childhood System of Care (System of Care), a collaboration of 42 organizations that coordinate closely to refer families to services within their network.
Why it matters:
For most families, knocking on multiple doors to find services and getting turned away before getting help is common. Parents have to decode the requirements of each program to see if they are eligible. As a result, many people do not get services they are qualified to receive.
What's next:
Could this work in other L.A. neighborhoods? PCSLA is currently surveying other neighborhoods in L.A. County that might want to use a similar model.
Karla Carrillo had to keep telling her story over and over. With her newborn daughter in tow, she told her story of domestic violence to case manager after case manager. She was looking for housing, child care, and work.
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Finding family services is hard. South LA is building a one-stop shop for people with young kids
Some case managers referred her to people at other organizations and some referred her to newer case managers as staff turned over. While some were helpful, many of her conversations did not lead to any actual services or follow up.
“I had no issue if someone was willing to hear, but I'm like, I'm telling my story just kind of for nothing,” she says.
After moving out of one shelter and celebrating her daughter’s first birthday in a motel, she managed to secure a spot for temporary housing at the shelter Upward Bound House.
Carrillo’s experience — knocking on multiple doors to find services and getting turned away before getting help — is common. Parents in crisis often have to navigate a patchwork of services from multiple organizations and agencies that don’t share client information with each other. Parents have to decode the requirements of each program to see if they are eligible. As a result, many people do not get services they are qualified to receive. For some, this could have long-range effects, with things like unstable housing leading to child welfare cases.
In response, a group of organizations in South L.A. has been working to create a one-stop shop for families. Partners for Children South L.A. (PCSLA) (the acronym is pronounced “PEACE-lah”) created what they call the Early Childhood System of Care, a collaboration of 42 organizations that coordinate closely to refer families to services within their network. Having served more than 10,000 families over the first 10 years, PCSLA’s “no wrong door” approach provides lessons for serving families in other high need neighborhoods in L.A. County and beyond.
Representatives from 42 organizations get together monthly to discuss the needs of families they serve.
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At monthly meetings, point contacts from each organization brainstorm particularly tricky cases together, explain eligibility requirements, and share resources.
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How it works
Bringing together a bunch of service organizations and getting them to collaborate is no easy task.
“I'm gonna be honest and say that when I first started here, there were a lot of folks in the community who didn't believe this could work,” says Lisa Bray, executive director of PCSLA. “One of the major things that I heard was, ‘You're never going to get South L.A. service providers to partner. They're too territorial. They're comfortable working in their silos.’”
But Bray was determined to make this vision a reality. She made the case that collaborating didn’t put organizations into competition with each other for funding. Instead, joining was a win-win. Each organization would have access to the services of the other organizations in the network, which meant better outcomes for families and therefore, better leverage for each organization when seeking funding.
When I first started here, there were a lot of folks in the community who didn't believe this could work. One of the major things that I heard was, ‘You're never going to get South L.A. service providers to partner.'
— Liza Bray, Partners for Children South L.A.
The System of Care started out in 2012 with seven organizations, some of which shared a common funder, the Atlas Family Foundation. Today the network includes 42 organizations, with more on the waiting list. Though eight of the organizations receive a small grant for their participation, most participate because they are committed to the shared mission.
The best place to see this collaboration in action is at one of its monthly “case conference” meetings. In November, close to 40 people are packed around a long table in a conference room at Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS). They are “primary care coordinators,” or case managers, from across the network, and the conversation moves around the room.
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How South LA organizations are working together to help families
Each person talks about the clients they are serving and asks questions to other organizations in the room. What’s the next step with a client who is on the verge of being evicted? Can a child who’s a citizen get child care and food vouchers even if their parent is undocumented?
The room spends some time discussing the case of a grandmother who cares for her daughter’s child. She needs housing for the child, but she doesn’t have custody. Without custody, she can’t even park her car at HOPICS-run “safe parking” sites overnight.
It’s a lively discussion. People from opposite sides of the room ask clarifying questions about the case and offer resources from their organizations.
At another point in the meeting, someone in the room reviews the four federal criteria that constitute the official definition of homelessness. “Couch surfing,” or staying temporarily at someone else’s house, doesn’t count. People around the room react audibly.
Angela Barron of Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS) fields questions about clients at the monthly meeting. Housing instability and homelessness are issues that have been coming up more frequently at these meetings.
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Grisel Morales, PCSLA program director, says that the System of Care secret sauce is the trust that people have built with each other through these in-person meetings. “It allows folks to be comfortable to ask those questions. Like, ‘Hey, I don't understand. Why are these folks eligible? Why are these families not eligible? Why were they declined?’”
Another side benefit of so many organizations collaborating is that gaps in the systems become clearer, and organizations can step in to fill them. When there were multiple complaints that there weren’t enough child care slots for families, PCSLA and Crystal Stairs developed a short-term child care subsidy project to give 28 families access to child care while they were on the waiting list.
How working together impacts families
At Upward Bound House, parent Karla Carrillo started taking a life skills course, which happened to be a pilot program that PCSLA was running. There, she met PCSLA executive director Liza Bray, who agreed to personally take on Carrillo’s case.
Tapping into the System of Care, Bray connected Carrillo with a child care spot at Southwest college through Crystal Stairs and speech therapy through the South Central Los Angeles Regional Center for her daughter. Through Upward Bound House’s permanent housing program, Carrillo was able to move into her own two-bedroom apartment with a short-term rent subsidy.
Each step has been a struggle. It took months for Carrillo to find an apartment, especially one close to her daughter’s daycare and speech therapy, because landlords were not open to taking a Section 8 voucher. After becoming licensed in phlebotomy, she started to get some work in this area and has also worked with nonprofits, including developing a survey for L.A. County parents with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice’s Youth Parent Council Group. These gigs aren’t yet enough to pay the bills, though.
Still, Carrillo is in a much better place than she was just three years ago, and feeling hopeful. “Finally able to have our own room [after] the past three years, just being unstable, not having that — it's really nice,” she says.
Through Partners for Children South L.A., Karla Carrillo has been able to access various services, including child care (through Crystal Stairs), early intervention services (through HACLA Regional Center), short-term rental subsidy (through Upward Bound House), emergency financial services, and more.
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She’s also seeing her daughter’s speech improve dramatically with the help of therapy. She says her daughter began singing along to songs. “Then she could start singing the song more by herself. And then she learned that, ‘Wow, people sing about animals. You know what? I like animals.’”
While Carrillo connected directly with PCSLA, Morales says that typically clients don’t even know that PCSLA exists. Instead, if everything in the System of Care is running smoothly, they just remember their primary care coordinator and the different services they received.
The families that I consider [a] success ... are families that don't even know we supported them.
— Grisel Morales, Partners for Children South L.A.
At the case conference meeting, Andrea Barron from HOPICS is the person in the room fielding the most questions from other organizations. Many families in South L.A. are struggling with housing instability and homelessness. “So, as you see, I always come prepared,” she says.
Find help in South LA
The following organizations are part of Partners for Children South L.A.'s System of Care, serving families in service planning area (SPA) 6 in South L.A.:
Barron says that while she supplies the network with housing information, her clients have also benefited from her connections with other organizations. “My clients that are homeless want to work,” she says. “So connecting them with child care. They don't have anyone to watch their babies.”
She shares that one of her clients, currently in a shelter, was able to connect to the WorkSource center and is actively looking for employment.
Lara Holtzman, vice president of legal and program services at Alliance for Children’s Rights, is part of an organization that serves broader L.A. County. She says that when they are helping clients who don’t live in South L.A., it’s a lot more work. “We end up doing a lot of research to try and identify appropriate resources, depending upon the needs of the client. But then we're starting from scratch. It's just about cold calling and then trying to make those connections.”
Grisel Morales, project director at Partners for Children South L.A., works closely with all of the 42 organizations to make sure everyone is working toward a shared vision.
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Collaboration requires commitment
Joining the Early Childhood System of Care is a commitment. Each organization that joins also agrees to have three staff members involved — a staff member in charge of the day-to-day case management, someone in senior management, and the CEO.
Holtzman was part of the early conversations to design the structure of the System of Care. She says that it was no small feat to get multiple agencies, all with their own work cultures and systems, to agree to a process. “That sort of agreement, like we're going to contact the client within 72 hours, was a big thing to say to everyone. Like, can we all agree to this?”
Morales, who coordinates the program, onboards new organizations in a day-long bootcamp and then is a constant presence, providing monthly reports to each organization on referrals and providing technical support when needed. She jokes that she feels like she is a staff member of all 42 organizations. Clients sometimes see her at multiple organizations and have to ask: Wait, where do you work again?
One thing Morales says she’s learned is that it’s key for all of the organizations to have a shared mission. They need to be open to shifting the way they work, which is hard if they are not on the same page. But, she says, “If there's an organization that is committed, then there's nothing we can't do.”
Challenges that the program faces
Despite its successes, the Early Childhood System of Care is not without its challenges.
For one, it’s hard to find the right technology solution that works for everyone. Though all organizations in the network use one centralized data management and tracking system to share data and send referrals to other organizations, it doesn’t always fit seamlessly into each organization's workflow. In some cases, organizations have to enter information about a single family into multiple software systems. HOPICS, for example, also uses another system that connects with other South L.A. housing organizations. PCSLA recently received funding to update this system and better integrate with other organizations' systems.
And, of course, the biggest challenge is that this solution operates within broader systems that put families in crisis in the first place. Bray says that for the System of Care to move beyond being a Band-Aid solution, it requires legislative change. “We've got to have more funding coming down from the federal level, the state level, the local level, to really infuse into these local efforts.”
Her dream for the Early Childhood System of Care is that it will eventually be able to connect with larger governmental agencies like the Department of Mental Health, Department of Public Social Services, and Department of Children and Family Services so that all these agencies can collaborate.
Liza Bray, director of Partners for Children South L.A., says that one of the biggest lessons from this effort is that there is power in partnership.
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Could this work in other L.A. neighborhoods?
South L.A. is currently the only neighborhood with this type of collaboration between service providers — but maybe not for long. PCSLA is currently surveying other neighborhoods in L.A. County to understand community needs and identify other neighborhoods that might want to implement a similar model.
“There’s power in partnership,” Bray says. “ I really want to have service providers in other areas see what we've been able to do in South L.A. and know that it's possible. Working with vulnerable populations, it's our responsibility to be innovative and to find new strategies that are going to allow us to serve our families in the most effective way possible.”
Payton Seda
is an associate producer for AirTalk and FilmWeek, hosted by Larry Mantle.
Published April 1, 2026 11:30 AM
We curated some great spots to thrift throughout the region.
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Topline:
Southern California is home to a vast array of vintage boutiques, thrift stores, and resale shops. Here are the hottest recommendations from our most avid thrifters.
Palm Springs is a apparently a thrifting hot spot. This thrift chain has locations throughout the Coachella Valley.
Read more... for lots of other secondhand spots.
Los Angeles may not be the fashion capital of the world, but it could contend for best thrift, at least in our humble opinion!
The key is knowing where to look.
Here are some of the best thrift and resale stores in different parts of Southern California according to our listeners and (very stylish) LAist colleagues.
The pinnacle of Pasadena and open every third Sunday of the month, the flea market houses 400 vendors with goods ranging from antique furniture to unique second-hand clothing.
If you’re looking for more affordable clothing and household items, Delaine Ureño, LAist senior institutional giving officer, frequents Hotbox Vintage in South Pasadena.
This thrift shop in San Pedro is owned and operated by the Peninsula Chapter of National Charity League and comes recommended by Mel in the South Bay, who says proceeds support local charities and scholarship funds.
This thrift store rec near Elysian Park comes from Lulu in Glendale, who says shoppers can grab a cute pair of pants along with unique furniture to put them in.
Anything on Long Beach’s aptly named Retro Row is worth hitting, according to AirTalk producer Manny Valladares. His favorite spot is Far Outfit. They have unique finds mostly from the early 2000s with a self-described “weird” factor.
With several locations throughout Orange County, including Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo, LAist reporter Yusra Farzan recommends Laura’s House, noting they have a great curated collection and proceeds help domestic violence victims.
Old Towne Orange is home to many great thrift stores and antique malls. If you’re looking for some good streetwear and sports jerseys, Timeless Vintage is a good choice. They have a great selection of 90s Looney Tunes and Disney graphic tees as well.
Another O.C. favorite is a fairly new addition to downtown Fullerton. Retropolis has a wide selection of apparel, but I like to go there for their chunky 80s sweaters and colorful jackets.
“[Eco Thrift] has really good discount days on top of already affordable clothing,” said Dañiel Martinez, LAist’s Weekend Edition producer. “Tons of good vintage and designer finds hidden in the racks.”
“I went to Palm Springs where they have some of the best thrifting,” said AirTalk listener Monica in Artesia. She bought a pair of Ferragamo shoes for just $8.
Kevin Tidmarsh, LAist’s All Things Considered producer, specifically recommends Revivals, a thrift chain with locations throughout the Coachella Valley.
The storefront at Echo Park Eats, which rents ghost kitchens to 40 restaurants.
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Some of Los Angeles’s most iconic eateries — Papa Cristo’s in Pico-Union, Guerrilla Tacos in Downtown and French eatery TAIX in Echo Park — have closed their doors, prompting hand-wringing about the decline of the city’s rich and diverse food scene. But those closures obscured a more notable achievement; 758 new restaurants opened last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2024, when 729 restaurants opened.
Self service and delivery apps: The explosion of digital-order services has rewritten the business model for restaurants, which are now operating with less space, reduced staff and tighter margins. Many of the new eateries do much of their business from behind a screen — either through self-service tablets or off delivery apps such as DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats.
Ghost kitchens: Ghost kitchens, or private kitchens used exclusively for delivery and takeout, have become a business model of their own. At Beverly Bites, 56 restaurants operate out of one facility serving the densely populated Beverly Hills and Beverlywood neighborhoods, though not all of them are open simultaneously. At Echo Park Eats, 40 restaurants are now within a five minute walk of Dodger Stadium.
Some of Los Angeles’s most iconic eateries — Papa Cristo’s in Pico-Union, Guerrilla Tacos in Downtown and French eatery TAIX in Echo Park — have closed their doors, prompting hand-wringing about the decline of the city’s rich and diverse food scene.
But those closures obscured a more notable achievement; 758 new restaurants opened last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2024, when 729 restaurants opened.
The split-screen view of dining in Los Angeles is part of a broader transformation that is reshaping the industry nationwide.
The explosion of digital-order services has rewritten the business model for restaurants, which are now operating with less space, reduced staff and tighter margins. Many of the new eateries do much of their business from behind a screen—either through self-service tablets or off delivery apps such as DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats.
So-called “limited-service” restaurants now account for nearly a third of all newly opened establishments. The number of traditional, or full-service, restaurants has also been growing, hitting 539 openings in 2025, and a record-high 587 the year before. If you count the number of coffee, smoothie and snack joints, the numbers rise even further.
Pizza to go
Many of Los Angeles’s restaurateurs are adapting to this burgeoning business model. Last year, Liz Gutierrez turned her pop-up restaurant, Fiorelli Pizza, into a small brick-and-mortar location in Beverly Grove with just a couple of stools at a counter for seating. As she saw restaurants closing their doors, the advantages of the new business model quickly dawned on her.
“This was something that could be operated with minimum labor, it could be way more manageable in terms of fixed costs and expenses, and we could still deliver restaurant-quality [food],” Gutierrez said.
The bevy of new food establishments opening their doors is a lone bright spot in an otherwise bleak economic picture: The total number of new businesses opening in the city is nearly half what it was a decade ago. That is driven in part by some of the same forces, such as Amazon.com, Inc. and other online retailers that put pressure on businesses operating out of traditional storefronts.
But the flourishing restaurant industry has been able to buck that trend so far. While Amazon can deliver clothes and even groceries, it still can’t deliver a fresh pizza or poké bowl.
The QR code will take your order
Linchi Kwok, a hospitality management researcher at Collins College of Hospitality Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said a lack of interest in working in the hospitality industry, paired with rising labor costs, has pushed restaurant owners to find cost-effective workarounds to run their operations with fewer people.
“Limited-service restaurants don’t have to hire many people to do the work. It saves labor costs, saves space, and saves the service turn-around time. They don’t have to worry about it,” Kwok said.
Restaurants must share a portion of their already slim profit margins—usually between 2-4% in L.A.—with an app service and the driver. To offset that, restaurants have cut down on staff, letting go of waiters, hostesses and dishwashers, many of whom are no longer needed when orders are increasingly being delivered in disposable containers.
Despite the record number of openings, running a restaurant in the city has not gotten any easier. Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Association, noted that in 2024 taxable restaurant revenue hit $11 billion, which, when adjusted for inflation, is on par with 2012 levels.
“The piece of the pie that each restaurant gets is slimmer.”
Condie also said that the hollowing out of entertainment work, increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and stricter regulations “are conspiring against the L.A. restaurant scene.”
Condie said that regulations from city hall, such as stricter labor oversight and a proposal for a $30 minimum wage for some workers, are making it even tougher.
“The business environment is bad generally in L.A., but the city council and the mayor seem to be throwing salt in the wound.”
As the number of new restaurant openings has spiked, so have the number of closings reported to the city. However, business closure figures are not as reliable as business opening data, as some establishments close without reporting it to the city. Since 2021, 593 full- and limited-service restaurants have reported closing, compared with 3,148 openings.
Jimmy Chu spent several years working in fine dining, which inspired him to start his own restaurant. He knew it would be expensive. Rather than opening another fine-dining establishment, he opted for a limited-service restaurant where customers could order at the counter, no waiters involved.
Chu quit his job by the end of 2024, and in May 2025, he opened Bomb Hot Dog in Downtown Los Angeles. He estimates that his eatery gets roughly a third of its customers through mobile delivery orders.
Ghost kitchens
Ghost kitchens, or private kitchens used exclusively for delivery and takeout, have become a business model of their own. At Beverly Bites, 56 restaurants operate out of one facility serving the densely populated Beverly Hills and Beverlywood neighborhoods, though not all of them are open simultaneously. At Echo Park Eats, 40 restaurants are now within a five minute walk of Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers schedule was hung on the wall inside the facility, so owners can anticipate heavy foot traffic and delivery orders during home games.
Last December, Ali Elreda rented out a space for his Mediterranean-Mexican fusion restaurant, Fatima’s Grill, at Echo Park Eats.
Elreda operates four brick-and-mortar Fatima’s Grill locations, and this is his first time renting a ghost kitchen. He said the decision to start a delivery and takeout location was both a matter of savings and efficiency.
“A lot of people are going the ghost-kitchen route because it’s quicker, it’s faster,” Elreda said. “You avoid a lot of overhead and foot traffic and having to find staff these days with the expensive economy out there is kind of tough.”
With ghost kitchen facilities, business owners also no longer have to compete with each other to find prime real estate in Los Angeles.
“You don’t have to do that research where you’ve got to find the right location. It’s just right there waiting for you,” Elreda said.
How we did it: We examined more than 15 years of business license data reported to the Los Angeles Office of Finance. Have questions about our data or want to ask us something? Write to use at askus@xtown.la Hyperlocal News
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It's been more than one month since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. The war has widened bitter ideological divides among Iranians in and outside the country over whether the conflict has been justified.
Lost opportunities: The commonality among most Iranians NPR spoke with is that they feel they have lost opportunities — to make a living, to voice their opinions, simply to live — under the current government, which they say must go. One man said, "Iran's security forces … took everything from us. They only give pain." However, another man said "There is no such thing as hardship in Iran. Everyone lives freely, woman or man."
Some remain hopeful: Nearly all the Iranians traveling in Turkey who spoke to NPR said they are hopeful about Iran. They have immediate plans to return to their country and stressed that they are not leaving it. Bout as one Iranian university students said, "The war should never have started. But now that it has, the U.S. and Israel should finish it," meaning toppling Iran's regime.
VAN, Turkey — It has been more than one month since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. The U.S. says it has hit more than 10,000 targets. But U.S.- and Norway-based human rights groups estimate that at least hundreds of Iranian civilians have also been killed.
The war has also widened bitter ideological divides among Iranians in and outside the country over whether the conflict has been justified.
"There is difficulty [with the bombing], but we are not that weak," says one Iranian woman from Tehran, traveling to Turkey for a short break, given that her work has stopped due to the U.S. and Israeli bombing of the capital city. "In the past few years, the Islamic Republic [of Iran] has proved to us that we cannot trust them. But we were in war with Israel in the summer [during the 12-day war], and we saw how precise their targeting was, so we trust them."
"We are going to build a nuclear bomb now, because there's no fatwa against it anymore," interjects an Iranian man, overhearing her remarks, referring to a rumored religious ban on nuclear weapons issued by Iran's former supreme leader, whom Israel assassinated with U.S. help at the beginning of the war in late February.
Like all the Iranians in this story, the two people asked to remain anonymous. They have received texts from the Iranian government and have seen signs coming out of Iran warning them not to speak to foreign media on pain of arrest.
A microcosm of divergent opinions
Just across the border with Iran, in eastern Turkey, the Turkish city of Van is just as full as during prewar times, with thousands of Iranian workers, consulate employees, students and tourists, who are traveling despite the war in their home country. Van has also become a microcosm of the full range of divergent opinions that Iranians have about the war.
"There is no such thing as hardship in Iran," says one Iranian man, who crossed into Turkey for his job last week. "Everyone lives freely, woman or man."
Next to him, a second Iranian man looks at him, wide-eyed and shaking.
"In two days, the government killed 40,000 people," the man says, referring to a government crackdown in January on protesters. A U.S.-based human rights group has confirmed over 7,000 deaths, but many Iranians believe the death toll is far higher.
NPR has not been able to travel and report inside Iran, so it has been interviewing Iranians traveling through border areas, including in eastern Turkey.
The dozens of Iranians NPR has interviewed transiting through Van may not be representative of all Iranians in the country. Many Iranians in Van are those wealthy enough to travel. But there are also poorer Iranians working, often under the table, in Turkey. A few Iranians I met and interviewed say they are heading off to study abroad.
The commonality among most Iranians NPR spoke with is that they feel they have lost opportunities — to make a living, to voice their opinions, simply to live — under the current government, which they say must go.
"Our pain is something you have to feel for yourself [to understand]," says one Iranian man who has been working in Turkey for the last year. He spent the previous seven years in prison, he says, after being accused of being an anti-Islamic heretic. "Iran's security forces … took everything from us. They only give pain. They are pain incarnate," he says, so much so, he is willing to lose all he has, even his family in Iran, for his government to be wiped out.
"The war should never have started," says one Iranian university student. "But now that it has, the U.S. and Israel should finish it," she says, meaning toppling Iran's regime.
"Met with bullets"
Some Iranians who support the war against their own country say their perspectives are indelibly shaped by that government crackdown in early January. This year's killings of demonstrators finally made them realize, they say, that decades of popular resistance would never change their government.
"Three of my own friends were killed" in the crackdown, says one Iranian man. He crossed into Turkey last week to earn money, more than he could make in Iran. "My friends were all young. I knew them all my life. Yet the government killed them so easily."
"Every two years, there is a big protest," he says. Research from Stanford University published this year found thousands of instances of dissent over the last decade and a half, averaging to one protest every three days inside Iran.
But this time, his hometown, in Iran's western Kermanshah province, was brutally punished by government paramilitary groups for people in his town participating in January's protests.
"It is as if my town has been burned down. Nothing is left of it," he says. "I see no future for my children in Iran." His only hope now, he says, is a foreign intervention. "Our only hope is Trump. Our only hope is that Trump and Bibi [Israel's prime minister] make the right moves."
"We are scared of the bombing," an Iranian woman says. "But we are happy thinking that there might be a light at the end of this darkness. When our young people went out and protested this January, they were met with bullets. With slaughter. With executions."
Nearly all the Iranians traveling in Turkey who spoke to NPR said they are hopeful about Iran. They have immediate plans to return to their country and stressed that they are not leaving it. Migration data from the United Nations shows fewer Iranians are leaving Iran for Turkey than before the war.
"We are not fleeing," says one young Tehran resident. Even though she almost lost an eye in the anti-government demonstrations this winter, she says she is going back to Tehran in a few days. "We are determined to rebuild our country, and if the government changes, I will work, for free if needed."
Copyright 2026 NPR
As early as Wednesday at 6:24 p.m., an Orion capsule seated atop a 322-foot rocket will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes according to plan, the capsule will carry four astronauts around the moon and back — sending humans the farthest they've ever been from our home planet.
About the mission: The mission will be the first launch in the Artemis moon program to include a crew. It follows the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, which sent an empty Orion capsule on a three-week ride around the moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. This time, the Artemis II astronauts will first orbit Earth to check out key systems on the spacecraft, and then trace a figure-eight path around our lunar neighbor and back. The entire journey is expected to take just under 10 days.
Why it matters: This mission is a crucial step toward NASA's goal of once again setting foot on lunar soil, and eventually establishing a permanent lunar presence — including a moon base — with the help of international partners.
Read on . . . for information on how to watch Artemis II's Wednesday morning launch.
Before taking his last steps on the moon, NASA astronaut Gene Cernan made sure to scratch his young daughter's initials into the lunar dust.
He had some parting thoughts for the rest of humanity, too.
"We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," the Apollo 17 commander said before departing for Earth.
That was December 1972. Now, more than half a century later, NASA may be about to fulfill Cernan's wishes.
Watch the launch live stream, set to start at 12:50 p.m. ET, here.
As early as Wednesday at 6:24 p.m., an Orion capsule seated atop a 322-foot rocket will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes according to plan, the capsule will carry four astronauts around the moon and back — sending humans the farthest they've ever been from our home planet.
The mission will be the first launch in the Artemis moon program to include a crew. It follows the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, which sent an empty Orion capsule on a three-week ride around the moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
This time, the Artemis II astronauts will first orbit Earth to check out key systems on the spacecraft, and then trace a figure-eight path around our lunar neighbor and back. The entire journey is expected to take just under 10 days.
This mission is a crucial step toward NASA's goal of once again setting foot on lunar soil, and eventually establishing a permanent lunar presence — including a moon base — with the help of international partners.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, Mark Burger, launch weather officer with the Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron, said there was an 80% chance of favorable conditions for launch day, though they were keeping a close eye on the weather.
Jeff Spaulding, senior NASA test director, is a veteran of many launches. He said that for his part, the reality that humans would soon be flying to the moon would probably set in during the final minute before ignition.
"That's when it really starts to hit home that, you know, we really got a shot at making it today," Spaulding said at the briefing. "And I know a lot of people are thinking the same thing, because you can hear a pin drop in that firing room as you count from 10 down to T-zero."
"After that, though," he said with a smile, "it may get a little bit noisier."
