Artemis II blasts off successfully: NASA sends astronauts to the Moon for the first time in 50 years

As never seen before this century, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Space Launch System rocket left Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B with four crew members aboard, bound for the Moon. It's the first mission of its kind in more than 50 years. On this occasion, unlike previous nighttime tests, the sun shone bright and the sky was clear and radiant; the sheer contrast between the roar, the fireball, and the white contrail of the launch left thousands of excited spectators awestruck as they gathered to witness a historic moment for humanity.

"The contrast against the blue sky was absolutely remarkable," Anthony Rodriguez, 35, told The New York Times from Cocoa Beach. "It's just an unforgettable sight."

It was the first space mission to send astronauts beyond Earth's orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Since that time, mankind had looked at the Moon from afar. 

Aboard the Orion capsule, four astronauts travel. Reid Wiseman, retired U.S. Navy captain and mission commander. Victor Glover, occupant of the pilot's seat. Christina Koch, mission specialist and the first woman to travel to the Moon. And mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, the first Canadian citizen to make the trip, and the first non-astronaut from NASA to go that far.

The successful day also had hiccups. Shortly before the scheduled 6:24 p.m. launch window, technicians detected a failure in the Flight Termination System. This mechanism allows the rocket to be destroyed remotely if it veers off course and poses a risk to human lives. Without that verified system, the launch would not have taken place and probably would have been postponed. According to The New York Times, the solution came thanks to a veteran operator who went to the Vehicle Assembly Building to fetch Space Shuttle-era equipment, decades-old hardware that served to verify the modern system. Eleven minutes after the confirmed new window, the rocket was airborne.

Before the hatch closed, Wiseman summed up the crew's status with two words, "Full-send." Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson replied from the ground, wishing him luck and cast a blessing for the trip: "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."

NASA explains that the mission will last ten days. The Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by its crew, will not land on the Moon but will circle it, as its purpose is to test, in real and practical conditions, the life support, navigation and maneuvering systems that will be indispensable when the time comes to return to lunar soil.

After spending the first few days in Earth's orbit performing tests and rehearsing docking maneuvers, the spacecraft will head for the Moon on a free-return trajectory, i.e., lunar gravity will return it to Earth on its own without the need to start engines or burn too much fuel. The flyby is scheduled for April 6. During those hours, the crew will observe the Moon, and there will be between 30 and 50 minutes when communications with Earth will be interrupted, blocked by the lunar body itself. On April 10, the capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off San Diego.

The four crew members, as detailed by the NYT, will be well fed. The menu for the ten-day mission includes 189 food items, beverages, and special condiments, among them coffee, green tea, mango and peach smoothies, apple cider, vegetable quiche, barbecue beef brisket, macaroni and cheese, and five varieties of hot sauce, among other options. However, the cost of food represents a minuscule fraction of the budget NASA has spent to return to the Moon: over the past two decades, the agency has allocated more than $50 billion to developing the rocket, the Orion capsule, and launch systems.

Each mission, NASA's inspector general estimated in 2021, costs about $4.1 billion, and, as planned, there will be more missions, as Artemis II is the second chapter in a program that kicked off in November 2022 with an unmanned mission that sent the Orion capsule to orbit the Moon for the first time.

If this mission goes as planned, the path will be open for lunar landing attempts by about 2028, to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon, extract resources such as frozen water for future missions and helium-3 for nuclear fusion plants, and make other scientific discoveries.