Four astronauts are circling Earth aboard NASA's Orion capsule, running down a checklist of life-support tests after Wednesday evening's launch from Kennedy Space Center, the first crewed moonshot in more than half a century. Commander Reid Wiseman summed up the opening hours simply: "It is a crazy first day."
The Artemis II mission lifted off at 6:35 p.m. from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, riding NASA's 32-story Space Launch System rocket through an eight-minute climb to space. Two upper-stage engine firings placed the crew in a highly elliptical 24-hour orbit, where they will spend roughly a full day testing whether Orion can keep them alive before pressing on toward the moon. It is only the capsule's second flight, and its first with human beings aboard.
If all goes well, a six-minute trans-lunar injection burn Thursday evening will boost the spacecraft's velocity by about 900 mph and send the crew on a four-day coast to the moon. They will loop behind the far side, pass within roughly 4,100 miles of the lunar surface, and head home for a Pacific Ocean splashdown off Southern California on April 10. No landing is planned. The point is to prove the hardware, and the people running it, before NASA risks putting astronauts on the surface.
Wiseman told CBS News that the 24-hour orbit exists for one reason: making sure the capsule can sustain human life.
"Can it scrub our carbon dioxide? Can it keep us alive? Can we drink water? Can we go to the bathroom? All those basic human functions."
The bathroom question became more than rhetorical almost immediately. Shortly after reaching orbit, mission specialist Christina Koch reported a fault while activating the toilet system. A flight controller relayed the bad news: "Christina, with the toilet, the fault that you reported, the toilet cannot spin up." The crew was told they could still use the system for fecal collection but would need contingency bags for urine.
Koch restored the system to normal operation within about an hour. It was exactly the kind of problem a test flight is designed to surface, a minor hiccup, caught early, fixed fast.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the mission in those terms. "This is a test flight," he told CBS News. "This is the opening act in a series of missions that will send astronauts to and from the moon with great frequency as we return to stay."
A little more than three hours after launch, pilot Victor Glover took over manual control of Orion and precisely positioned the capsule around the spent upper stage. Glover described the ride to orbit as "a little rumble, like driving on a rocky road." The manual-control test is a key objective: NASA needs to know that a human pilot can steer the spacecraft if automation fails far from home.
The crew faced an 18-hour first day, capped by two four-hour sleep periods early Thursday. Before the launch, the crew had been preparing for this moment through years of training and mission rehearsals.
Glover, the mission's pilot, also spoke about the crew's broader significance. "We are essentially going to make sure that the vehicle flies the way that we think it does, that we designed it to do," he said. But he added a note about history as well:
"Twenty-four men have seen the moon, and we're going to send the first set of woman's eyes. They think that she can potentially see colors that we may not see. And so I think that's also very important."
Newsmax reported that the crew is the most diverse ever assembled for a lunar mission, the first to include a woman, a person of color, and a non-U.S. citizen on a NASA moonshot. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, of the Canadian Space Agency, rounds out the four-person team.
If NASA's mission management team reviews Orion's orbital performance and declares the spacecraft "go," the TLI burn will fire Thursday evening as the capsule races through the low point of its orbit. From there, the timeline moves quickly.
By Monday, the astronauts will enter the lunar sphere of influence, where the moon's gravitational pull exceeds Earth's. The spacecraft will reach some 248,650 miles from Earth, the exact figure is not yet known, equaling and then surpassing the distance record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
Monday evening brings the mission's most dramatic stretch. Orion will pass behind the leading edge of the moon and lose contact with mission control in Houston for about 40 minutes. When it emerges, communications will be restored, and the crew will have witnessed something no human has seen since the Apollo era.
Koch said the crew plans to make the most of it. "We are going to maximize every minute of looking at that far side," she said, noting that about a quarter of the moon will be in sunlight during their passage. She added that certain launch windows offer illumination "that will allow us to see things for the first time ever with human eyes, and that actually makes a difference to the people doing the scientific data analysis."
Getting to this point was not easy. Earlier delays caused by hydrogen leak issues pushed the launch timeline back, and Fox News noted that technical problems including fuel and helium leaks had forced previous postponements before the mission finally cleared the pad.
By Tuesday afternoon, Orion will leave the lunar sphere of influence and begin the coast back to Earth. On Thursday, April 9, the astronauts plan a ship-to-ship call with the International Space Station, followed by a crew news conference that afternoon.
Then comes the hardest part. On Friday, April 10, Orion will slam into Earth's atmosphere at roughly 25,000 mph, pushing heat-shield temperatures to about 5,000 degrees. The capsule will slow to around 300 mph before parachutes deploy, bringing it to a 15-mph splashdown in the Pacific. Navy crews will stand by to help the astronauts out of the spacecraft and transport them by helicopter to a nearby ship. From there, the crew will fly to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for debriefing, medical checks, and reunions with their families.
Koch reflected on what that moment will feel like. "I think Jeremy said it best, when that hatch opens on the Pacific Ocean, we'll probably be pretty ready to get out," she said. "But a part of us will know that there are some moments left that we will miss forever and probably won't ever get to have back."
Artemis II is not the destination. It is the proving ground. After this mission, NASA's focus will shift to the next phase: another Orion crew testing rendezvous and docking procedures next year with one or both of the moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. If that goes well, NASA plans one and possibly two moon landing missions in 2028.
Isaacman cast the broader vision in terms of national purpose. "It's important because we're fulfilling a promise... for America's return to the moon as a stepping stone for all the things that we are going to do farther out into our solar system," he said, "like some day American astronauts planting the stars and stripes on Mars."
He pointed to the scientific, economic, and technological potential of sustained lunar operations, and then asked a simpler question:
"How many kids after this mission are going to dress up as astronauts for Halloween and want to grow up and contribute to this great adventure?"
President Donald Trump celebrated the launch. "America is going back to the Moon!" he declared, as the Washington Examiner reported. He added: "We are WINNING, in Space, on Earth, and everywhere in between... America doesn't just compete, we DOMINATE, and the whole World is watching."
House Speaker Mike Johnson offered his own statement, praying "for the safety and success of the Artemis II crew and NASA as they undertake a mission that will carry humanity farther into space than we have gone in over half a century."
Fifty-three years is a long time to wait. The fact that Americans are finally heading back, testing the hardware, proving the systems, building the road to a permanent lunar presence, is a reminder of what this country can do when it stops arguing about pronouns and starts pointing rockets at the sky.
