NASA have launched the first lunar voyage in 53 years.
The Artemis II mission is underway after successfully taking off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre on Merritt Island in Florida on Wednesday afternoon local time.
The Orion space shuttle carries four astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
“Artemis II crew is go for launch. Full set,” Crew commander Wiseman told mission control.
“Let’s go to the moon!” he said.
Five minutes into the flight, Wiseman told mission control: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it.”
The crew is reported to be the most diverse lunar crew, with the first woman, person of colour and non-US citizen on board.
The space shuttle will travel few thousand kilometres beyond the moon, perform a U-turn and then touchdown in the Pacific for the 10 day mission.
The Artemis II Mission hopes to set a new distance record for the farthest humans have travelled from Earth as they travel 6,400 kilometres beyond the moon, a record that was previously held by Apollo 13 in 1970.
“Assuming all the burns go as planned and the timeline is executed as we think it’s going to be, it’ll be on flight day 6, at an MET [mission elapsed time] of about 18 hours,” Norm Knight, director of NASA’s Flight Operations Directorate, said.
“That’s where we will beat the Apollo distance record — or at least, that’s where we believe that’s gonna happen.”
Prior to the launch, two technical issues were detected, one related to the battery temperature and another related to the rocket’s flight-termination or it’s ability to self-destruct in case it veered off course and was aiming for a populated area.
Both issues were fixed and the launch went ahead as planned.
The astronauts were also quarantined prior ahead of the launch to prevent any illness, with the spacecraft equipped with a medical kit and basic first-aid items in case any of them fall ill.
Image: NASA
