Overview
- Artemis II, which launched Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center, is now in high Earth orbit for roughly a day of checkouts before heading to the Moon.
- NASA cleared several minor glitches in the countdown and early flight, including a flight-termination system communication issue, a false temperature reading on the abort system, a brief telemetry hiccup, a waste-system fault light, and a water-tank valve that needed a reset.
- After these checkouts, Orion will fire its engine for a translunar injection that sends the crew on a free-return path, a route that uses the Moon’s gravity to guide them back to Earth without another major burn.
- The crew will fly about 8,000 kilometers above the lunar surface and is expected to travel farther from Earth than Apollo 13, with a brief communications blackout as Orion passes the Moon’s far side.
- Commander Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will test life-support and manual controls and collect sleep, stress, and radiation data, building toward a planned Pacific splashdown on April 10 and future Artemis landings targeted for 2028.