NASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off from Florida on Wednesday evening, sending four astronauts on a journey around the moon in the first crewed deep-space flight since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The orange-and-white rocket successfully lifted off at 6:35 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center, drawing cheers from tens of thousands of spectators. Commanded by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, the crew includes Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The mission will not land on the moon but will test the Orion spacecraft and pave the way for future lunar landings under NASA’s Artemis program. The Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft at the heart of the program, which cost nearly $100 billion to develop, are already largely obsolete thanks to advances made by commercial spaceflight companies like SpaceX, leading some commentators to criticize the program for its wastefulness.
Artemis II is scheduled to swing around the moon and splash down in the Pacific on April 10.
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