NASA Set to Launch Crew to Moon for First Time in 50 Years

NASA astronauts are poised to lift off Wednesday on a 10-day journey that will slingshot them around the moon, marking humanity’s return to the lunar vicinity for the first time in more than half a century.

The crew’s Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Orion capsule, perched atop the Boeing Co.-made Space Launch System rocket, is set to launch at 6:24 p.m. local time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow spoke with Congressman Mike Haridopolos, Republican representing Florida's 8th District ahead of the launch at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA astronauts are poised to lift off Wednesday on a 10-day journey that will slingshot them around the moon, marking humanity’s return to the lunar vicinity for the first time in more than half a century.

The crew’s Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Orion capsule, perched atop the Boeing Co.-made Space Launch System rocket, is set to launch at 6:24 p.m. local time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission is a crucial, in-space dress rehearsal for the long-delayed SLS rocket and Orion capsule, and marks the biggest milestone yet in NASA’s multi-year Artemis campaign to land humans on the moon as soon as 2028.

If the mission launches on schedule, the four-person crew will travel farther in space than anyone in history. The elaborate preparations for the launch were moving ahead on Wednesday with no apparent delays.

At around 2 p.m., the astronauts in bright orange suits walked out of crew quarters, waving to cheering spectators and blowing kisses to their families, before piling into an “astrovan” — the designated vehicle to bring astronauts to and from the launch pad — branded with an Artemis II logo.

President Donald Trump’s NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, and former astronaut and US Senator Mark Kelly attended the send-off.

Earlier, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher joined other NASA officials, lawmakers and industry executives walking the press site, conducting interviews. TV outlets set up white tents on the lawn outside to capture the giant SLS rocket standing a few miles away.

Watch parties are planned across the country, including in major space hubs like Seattle, Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, where the core stage of the SLS is produced.

The Artemis voyages will attempt to repeat and then leapfrog feats achieved during the historic Apollo program that landed Neil Armstrong and 11 other men on the lunar surface in the 1960s and 1970s.

With Artemis — named after the twin goddess of Apollo — NASA aims to stay on the moon long-term. Isaacman has laid out a decade-long $30-billion plan to set up a base on the moon where astronauts can live and work.

Isaacman has also sped through a significant makeover of the overall mission, including adding a test mission in 2027 that will send a crew to dock with one of the lunar landers being built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

“America will never again give up the moon,” Isaacman said when he unveiled the moon base plans.

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The crew will spend roughly four days traveling to the lunar vicinity, where they will swing behind the moon’s far side — a vantage that is never seen from Earth. They are slated to perform a flyby of the lunar surface on April 6.

If the mission unfolds as planned, their trajectory will take them within only roughly 4,112 miles (6,618 kilometers) of the moon during their closest approach, with the orb appearing about the size of a basketball in an outstretched hand in the capsule window.

Commanding Wednesday’s Artemis II mission is NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, a 27-year Navy veteran and former head of the agency’s astronaut office. Flying with him are NASA astronauts Victor Glover, the mission’s pilot, and Christina Koch, a mission specialist who conducted the first all-female spacewalk. They are joined by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will be flying to space for the first time on this trip.

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