NASA is set to launch the Artemis II mission on Wednesday evening from Kennedy Space Center, marking the first crewed flight to travel around the Moon in more than 50 years.
Liftoff is scheduled for 6:24 p.m. ET. The four-member crew will ride aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System, embarking on a 10-day journey that will take them as far as 252,000 miles from Earth. That’s farther than any human has traveled since Apollo 13 in 1970.
Commander Reid Wiseman, a former Navy test pilot, will lead the mission. He’s joined by pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“Nothing but gratitude for the men and women of this great nation. It is time to fly,” Wiseman wrote on social media ahead of the launch.
The countdown, which began Monday, entered a scheduled hold Wednesday morning for final system checks. NASA said the pause is standard procedure for complex missions.
“Engineers perform final configuration checks, review system health, and ensure all launch criteria are met,” the agency said in a launch-day update. “These holds are standard in complex missions like Artemis II, providing flexibility and confidence as we prepare to send astronauts on a journey around the Moon.”
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, appointed by President Trump, struck a direct tone ahead of the mission. “Artemis II waits on the pad, ready to carry astronauts potentially farther than any humans have traveled in more than half a century,” he said. “The next era of exploration begins.”
The Artemis program’s broader goal is to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a long-term human presence on the Moon. A follow-up mission planned for 2027 will test lunar landing systems developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. NASA’s target for an actual lunar landing is as early as 2028.
Artemis II does not include a Moon landing. Wiseman’s crew will loop around the Moon and return to Earth, a shakedown mission to verify that Orion and its life support systems perform as designed with humans on board.
The United States has not sent astronauts beyond low Earth orbit since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.
