Liftoff! NASA astronauts have launched on a historic journey to the moon

Cheers erupted throughout the control room at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday as NASA's Artemis II mission to send four astronauts to the moon rocketed skyward.

The 322-foot-tall, orange-and-white SLS rocket blasted off at 6:35 Eastern Daylight Time. Perched atop it was the Orion capsule, the spacecraft set to take its crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a 230,000-mile trip around the moon and back.

If successful, Artemis II will mark the first time humans have returned to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972 — and the first time that a woman, a person of color, and a non-American have made the journey.

The crew members will first orbit Earth so that they can check out key systems on their spacecraft, including life support, communication, and navigation. Then they'll fire their vehicle's propulsion system to send themselves on a looping figure-eight path around the moon and back, ending with a splashdown into the Pacific Ocean.

It will take several days to get out to the moon, and the entire mission is expected to last about 10 days.

While Artemis II will not touch down on the lunar surface, the mission is a key step towards an eventual moon landing that will support NASA's goal of establishing a permanent lunar presence, including a moon base, with the help of international partners.

The next mission in the Artemis program, Artemis III, is slated to remain nearby in Earth's orbit and practice rendezvousing with the program's lunar landing system. Artemis IV and V would then take astronauts to the moon's surface, using lunar landers designed and developed by commercial space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.

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