And we have liftoff. Humanity is about to be reunited with the moon for the first time in 53 years as Artemis II finally took flight today.
A gigantic tower of flame thrusted the 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket from Launch Pad 39 at 6.35pm local time.
Crowds gathered at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida watched as the spacecraft carrying four astronauts took flight.
The team include three teary-eyed Nasa spacefarers: Commander Reid Wiseman, the pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch.
A second mission specialist, Jeremy Hansen of Canada, will be the first person not from the US space agency to get this close to the moon.
‘Full-send,’ said Wiseman, clearing the way for the launch.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson replied: ‘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 this generation.
‘Good luck. Godspeed Artemis II. Let’s go.’
There’s a lot of firsts today. This is the first time anyone will travel this far from Earth since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The goal of the mission is to test life-support and other critical systems – the toilet included – on the capsule the team are inside, the Orion.
If all goes to plan, it’ll pave the way for Artemis III, where a team will land on the south pole of the moon by the end of 2028.
Artemis II just launched – what now?
Artemis is Nasa’s return-to-the-moon programme. The project’s first mission, known as Artemis I, involved an uncrewed Orion capsule doing a 1.3 million-mile lap around the moon in 2022.
Artemis II was slated for earlier this year but was delayed twice due to hiccups during dress rehearsals.
Yet these were a good thing, Libby Jackson, who worked in Mission Control for a module on the International Space Station, tells Metro.
‘Until you have got all the way down to zero, it might not happen,’ she says of the 10-second countdown to launch.
‘You don’t believe it until you get into those final seconds.’
The head of space at the Science Museum in London adds that as nail-biting as the countdown was, it’s just the start of the 10-day mission.
‘It’s 10 minutes up into space. That all has to go right? You want the crew to be safe. You want the rocket to work well.’
Don’t get too attached to the 2,600,000kg orange rocket, though, as it’ll be thrown away while Artemis II is orbiting Earth.
For two minutes, the rocket’s two side boosters’ engines will fire through all the propellant in their tanks before snapping off, tumbling into the ocean.
For six minutes, the engine will fire until the core stage falls off, leaving the upper stage and the Orion at nearly 1,381 miles above Earth’s surface.
Jackson, now head of space at the Science Museum in London, says the next steps will be for the craft to deploy solar panels.
‘If you don’t deploy at the solar arrays, you have no mission, because you need the power,’ she adds.
If any serious problems arise while Orion is still in Earth orbit, mission control will bring the astronauts home.
‘Everyone will have done their homework, but there is a chance they get into space and then they go to the moon and just come back,’ Jackson warns.
‘But everything has been well prepared and well checked out and well tested. So no one launches this mission expecting it to do that.’
Four days into the mission, the spacecraft will loop around the moon’s mysterious far side, also called the dark side, so astronauts can observe the lunar surface, some of which have never been seen by human eyes before.
Just a day later, the team will return to Earth by using the moon’s gravity to fling itself, a process called ‘free return’, which will take four days.
While it sounds out there, this method means the capsule can return home even if its propulsion system breaks down.
The Orion will smash into the Earth’s rough atmosphere at about 25,000mph, withstanding temperatures of 2,760°C, and splash down just off the coast of San Diego.
Why are we bothering to go to the moon?
Compared to discussions about migrating to Mars or discovering life on faraway worlds, visiting our closest neighbour might sound mundane.
After all, we know a great deal about the moon already, Dr Megan Argo, a reader in astrophysics at the University of Lancashire, tells Metro.
But there’s a great deal we don’t know about this big grey rock – including how it even formed, which could help us understand how we came to be.
‘The moon has fascinated humans for thousands of years, appearing constant yet ever-changing in our skies and helping track time and seasons,’ explains Dr Argo.
‘Every culture has developed its own stories and traditions around it.’
Unlike the Earth, where ocean currents and earthquakes can sweep away our history, the moon is a well-preserved history book.
‘This means its rocks and potential water deposits act as an archive, offering insights into planetary formation that we simply can’t access on Earth,’ Dr Argo adds.
Think of Artemis II as a trial run not only for Artemis III, but for missions that could go further into the cosmos than humanity ever has before, says Jackson.
Not only for months-long stays on the moon in lunar bases powered by nuclear energy, but also for journeying to Mars.
‘One of the points of the Artemis programme is to learn how to live and work on another planet through your body,’ Jackson says.
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