Artemis Two Blasts Off, First Crewed Moon Mission in 50 Years

0:00On April 2, NASA's Artemis-2 mission blasted off yesterday evening from Kennedy Space Center, marking the first crew trip toward the Moon since, 1972. This powerhouse rocket, the most powerful NASA has ever built, carries four astronauts, Commander Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch from the Undy, US, and Canada's Jeremy Hanson on a 250,000-mile-round trip to the Moon's far side. The crew will push farther into space than any humans before, topping the Apollo 13 record from 1970. After a smooth, four-minute climb into orbit, they're prepping for burns around Earth, before heading lunar in three to four days. Krause and Florida erupted in cheers as the rocket roared skyward, plumes of smoke everywhere. BBC Science Editor Rebecca Morell got choked up live on air, feeling the raw power shake her body while calling its spectacular pure emotion from. Everyone watching history unfold. So far, everything's nominal, despite a brief com's glitch and a minor toilet fix on the Orion capsule.

1:06Mission control gave the crew an inspiring send-off, carrying the dreams of a generation as they chased that moon rise. In about ten days, they'll loop the dark side, test safety drills against radiation, then plunge back through Earth's atmosphere at nearly three, thousand degrees Fahrenheit for a Pacific splashdown, paving the way for humanity's next lunar chapter.