Four astronauts launched aboard NASA's Artemis II rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission that will send them around the Moon and back, the first crewed flight past the lunar surface in more than half a century. Liftoff came at about 6:35 p.m. local time, before a crowd that was reported to be roughly 400,000 people.
The crew is made up of three Americans and one Canadian. After reaching Earth orbit, they are running checks on the Orion capsule that will carry them. Early in the flight, engineers dealt with a fault in a toilet controller and a brief communication problem, which has since been resolved.
The flight plan calls for about 10 days in total, with a loop around the Moon before the capsule returns to Earth. The mission is also set to establish a new distance record for a crewed spacecraft and to carry the first woman, the first person of colour and the first non-American to travel to the Moon's vicinity.
Artemis II is the first flight of NASA's Space Launch System, a rocket program that has faced repeated delays and cost overruns. The agency is aiming for a crewed lunar landing in 2028, a timetable that some experts consider ambitious. The effort is also being framed as part of a race with China, which has set a goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030. President Donald Trump praised the launch and has pressed for a faster Artemis schedule before his term ends in 2029.
We rewrote this story on 4 November 2026 after an editorial review.
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