NASA launches four astronauts on world's first crewed lunar mission in half a century

By Joey Roulette

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, April 1 (Reuters) - Four astronauts blasted off from Florida on Wednesday on NASA's Artemis II mission, a high-stakes 10-day trip around the moon that marks the United States' boldest step yet toward returning humans to the lunar surface this decade before China's first crewed landing.

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule, roared to life just before sunset at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT) at the agency's Kennedy Space Center to lift its first crew of three U.S. astronauts and a Canadian astronaut off Earth. Its thunderous ascent left behind a towering column of thick white vapor.

The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts ‌Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen are poised for a nearly 10-day expedition around the moon and back, taking them deeper into space than humans have ever gone.

"This is Jeremy, we are going for all humanity," Hansen, strapped inside Orion, told launch control minutes before liftoff.

"Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, on this historic mission you take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation," launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told the crew through a communications line from launch control.

"Good luck, godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go," she added.

After nearly three years of training, the crew is the first to fly in NASA's Artemis program, a multibillion-dollar series of missions created in 2017 to build up a long-term U.S. presence on the moon over the next decade and beyond.

The launch was a major milestone more than a decade in the making for the U.S. space agency's SLS rocket, handing its core contractors Boeing BA.N and Northrop Grumman NOC.N long-sought validation that the 30-story-tall system can safely loft humans into space, as NASA increasingly relies on newer, cheaper rockets from Elon Musk's SpaceX and others.

The crew's gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, built for NASA by Lockheed Martin LMT.N, will separate from the SLS upper stage 3-1/2 hours into flight in Earth's orbit. The crew will then take manual control of Orion to test its steering and maneuverability around the detached upper stage, attempting the first of dozens of test objectives planned throughout the mission.

The Artemis II mission is a key early step in the flagship U.S. moon program, which is targeting its first crewed landing on the lunar surface in 2028 in the Artemis IV mission.

NASA is pressed to achieve that lunar landing - its first since the final Apollo mission in 1972 - as China expands its own lunar program with a planned astronaut landing as soon as 2030.

FARTHEST TRIP IN HISTORY

The Artemis II mission will send the crew some 252,000 miles (406,000 km) into space - the farthest humans have ever traveled.

The current record for the farthest spaceflight at roughly 248,000 miles is held by the three-man crew of the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, which was beset by technical problems after an oxygen tank exploded and was unable to land on the moon as planned.

NASA launched its first Artemis mission without crew in 2022, sending the Orion spacecraft on a similar path around the moon and back.

Artemis II will pose a greater test of Orion and the SLS rocket. Boeing BA.N and Northrop Grumman NOC.N have led the development of SLS since 2010, a program partly known for its ballooning costs at an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion per launch.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are racing to develop the landers that NASA will use to put its astronauts on the lunar surface.

Artemis III had been set to be the agency's first astronaut moon landing, but new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in February added an extra test mission before the landing.