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| Artemis II start |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — With a thunderous roar that shook the Florida coastline, humanity’s long‑awaited return to the Moon began. On April 1, 2026, at 6:35 p.m. ET, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket ignited its four RS‑25 engines, lifting the Orion spacecraft and its four‑member crew from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39‑B. Artemis II—the first crewed lunar mission in more than five decades—was finally under way.
For the astronauts strapped inside the gumdrop‑shaped capsule, the ascent was the culmination of nearly three years of training. For the world watching live, it was a moment of collective awe. And for the engineers in Houston, it was the beginning of a high‑stakes, ten‑day test flight that will determine whether humans can once again live and work in deep space.
A Quirky Tradition Before the Big Leap
Just hours before liftoff, however, the crew engaged in a curious ritual. Inside the suit‑up room at the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen sat down for a game of cards.
The tradition is simple: the game continues until the mission commander loses. The idea, passed down through generations of NASA astronauts, is that the commander’s defeat “burns off” all his or her bad luck, leaving only good fortune for the mission ahead. The Artemis II crew played a lively round of High Card Wins, and by all accounts, the ritual worked exactly as intended.
“It’s a fun way to relax before the most intense day of your life,” former astronaut Jerry Linenger told CNN. “It brings the crew together and reminds them that they’re a team.”
A Heart‑Stopping Warning in Deep Space
The mission was barely a day old when the team faced its first real test. Shortly after completing the critical translunar injection burn—the engine firing that pushes a spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit and onto a lunar trajectory—a warning flashed on Orion’s onboard computer: “Cabin leak suspected.”
For any spacecraft operating in the hostile vacuum of deep space, a cabin leak is a potentially catastrophic event. It could compromise the structural integrity of the capsule and expose the crew to the vacuum of space.
“This grabs your attention because you go right from doing this burn and you’re heading to the Moon to thinking, ‘Are we going to have to cancel this burn, start getting into our spacesuits and figuring out how to get home in a day or less?’” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen recalled during the crew’s first live interview from space.
But Mission Control in Houston reacted with professional calm. Flight director Judd Frieling quickly analyzed the telemetry and confirmed that all cabin pressures and temperatures remained normal. “We quickly knew that there was no leak,” Frieling said at a subsequent briefing at Johnson Space Center. The warning turned out to be a false alarm—a sensor anomaly—and the decision was made to press on.
Hansen added, “Houston helped us out—they confirmed they were seeing good cabin pressure and so were we on‑board. We did the burn and now we’re heading to the Moon and feeling good.”
The Engine Burn That Changed Everything
The translunar injection itself was a marvel of engineering. The main engine of Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) fired for five minutes and 55 seconds, providing 26.7 kN of thrust—enough to accelerate an SUV from 0 to 100 km/h in just 2.7 seconds. The burn went “flawlessly,” according to NASA’s Dr. Lori Glaze, and sent the crew on a four‑day coast toward the Moon.
The European Service Module, built by Airbus on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), is the propulsion heart of the Orion spacecraft. It carries 33 engines that guide, steer, and propel the crew safely toward the Moon and back. “Without the ESM, Orion would be nothing more than a passenger,” one ESA engineer noted. “It provides the power, the life support, and the thermal control that keep four humans alive in deep space.”
For the latest mission updates and NASA’s official blog, visit: NASA’s Artemis Blog
Meet the Pioneers
The four astronauts aboard Artemis II are a diverse and deeply experienced team.
Commander Reid Wiseman is a U.S. Navy test pilot who spent six months aboard the International Space Station in 2014. A single father of two teenage daughters, he describes parenting as his “greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase” of his life. He carries a small notepad to jot down his thoughts during the mission.
Pilot Victor Glover is a naval aviator and former legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate. He logged 168 days on the ISS as part of Expedition 64, and he will be the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon.
Mission Specialist Christina Koch is an engineer and physicist who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman—328 days aboard the ISS. She also took part in the first all‑female spacewalk. As a child, a poster of the Earthrise photograph from Apollo 8 hung on her bedroom wall; today, she becomes the first woman to journey to the Moon.
Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen is a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force and a former fighter pilot. He is the first non‑American to travel to the Moon, marking a historic milestone for the Canadian Space Agency.
Breaking Records, Paving the Way for Mars
Artemis II is not a landing mission. Its primary goal is to test Orion’s life‑support systems, crew interfaces, and navigation capabilities in the deep‑space environment. The astronauts will fly a figure‑eight trajectory around the Moon, reaching a point more than 6,400 miles (10,299 km) beyond the lunar far side—farther from Earth than any humans have ever traveled. That record, previously held by the beleaguered Apollo 13 crew, is expected to fall during flight day six.
On that same day, the crew will witness a total solar eclipse caused by the Moon sliding directly in front of the Sun, with Earth hanging off to one side—a sight no human has ever seen in person.
The mission also carries a broader significance. Artemis II is the critical stepping‑stone toward Artemis III (a lunar landing scheduled for 2028) and eventually toward human missions to Mars. “It’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the Moon,” Hansen said shortly after the translunar injection.
The Voice on the Ground
Back on Earth, one person plays an especially vital role. Jenni Gibbons, a Calgary‑born mechanical engineer and former assistant professor at the University of Cambridge, serves as the mission’s CAPCOM—the primary voice link between the astronauts and Mission Control.
Gibbons is also the official backup for Jeremy Hansen. In the unlikely event that Hansen could not fly, she would have taken his seat, making her the third Canadian woman in space. But even without that contingency, her role is indispensable: she is the calm, familiar voice that guides the crew through every maneuver and reassures them during moments of uncertainty.
“She’s the person who says, ‘Good morning, Orion, Houston is go for today’s burn,’” one mission controller explained. “That voice matters. It’s the thread that connects four humans in deep space to the rest of the world.”
What Comes Next
As of flight day three, Orion was more than 100,000 miles from Earth and closing in on the Moon. A small trajectory‑correction burn—lasting just eight seconds—was scheduled to fine‑tune the spacecraft’s path. The lunar flyby is expected on April 6, after which Orion will loop around the far side and begin the journey home.
Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California is planned for April 11, the mission’s tenth day. If all goes well, the Artemis II crew will return to a world that has taken one giant step closer to a sustained human presence beyond Earth.
NASA is providing a live stream of the entire journey via YouTube. Occasionally, CAPCOM Jenni Gibbons checks in from Houston. Should communication ever fail, she is authorized to represent the crew’s interests on Earth.
For high‑resolution launch imagery, visit: NASA Image Detail: Artemis II Launch
A New Era Begins
More than 50 years after the last Apollo astronaut left boot prints in the lunar dust, humanity has returned to the Moon’s doorstep. Artemis II is not merely a nostalgia trip; it is a bold test of new technology, international partnership, and human endurance. The four pioneers aboard Orion are carrying the hopes of a generation that has never known a time when humans did not venture beyond low Earth orbit.
“There is nothing normal about this,” Commander Wiseman said during the crew’s first live interview. “Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now only just realizing the gravity of that.”
As Orion continues its silent, looping path toward the far side of the Moon, the world watches—and waits for the next giant leap.
Sources: NASA Artemis II Blog, ESA, BBC, Gizmodo, CNN, Daily Mail, KHOU, Florida Today, RTÉ, AP News, Canadian Space Agency. Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky.
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| Artemis II Mission control room |
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| Pre-mission card game |