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The Artemis II mission successfully launched into space on April 1, at 6:35pm Eastern time, from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day trip around the moon. This mission is the first crewed Artemis flight and will lay the groundwork for future trips to the moon itself, the first flight with a crew onboard the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft system and our first foray into deep space since the Apollo program.
A few hours into their journey, and the astronauts could already see majestic views of our planet. However, the astronauts also reported a problem with their waste-management system, which is the first real toilet installed on a deep-space mission. The astronauts thankfully have a backup option: Waste collection bags that Apollo crews had used and had previously discarded on the lunar surface.
— NASA (@NASA) April 2, 2026
By 10:43PM Eastern, the Orion spacecraft carrying the four astronauts successfully separated from the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket. Glover then started manually piloting the capsule to demonstrate and test how Orion would move and dock with the future
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The crew of Artemis II will not descend to the moon, but their capsule will fly over the far side of its surface.
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Follow along live as we track NASA's historic Artemis II mission.
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