The Artemis II astronauts have blasted off towards the Moon, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. NASA’s Orion spacecraft, carrying Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, fired its engines and broke free from Earth’s orbit, embarking on a 10-day journey around the Moon. This mission is the first crewed lunar flyby in over 50 years, since the Apollo era, and aims to test the spacecraft’s life support systems and prepare for future lunar landings.
The crew will fly by the Moon at a distance of approximately 4,600 miles from its surface, witnessing a total solar eclipse and capturing unprecedented views of the lunar far side. This historic mission will also break the Apollo 13 distance record, taking humans farther from Earth than ever before.
