NASA’s Artemis II launches four astronauts on world’s first crewed lunar mission in half a century

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - Four astronauts blasted off from Florida on April 1 on NASA’s Artemis II mission, a high-stakes 10-day trip around the Moon that marks the US’ boldest step yet towards returning humans to the lunar surface later this decade in a race with China.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule, roared to life just before sunset at 6.35pm (6.35am, April 2, Singapore time) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying its debut crew – three US astronauts and a Canadian astronaut – into Earth’s orbit. The 32-storey-high space vehicle thundered into the clear skies trailing a towering column of thick, white vapour.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the launch was an opening act for subsequent missions that would include construction of a Moon base to support the “enduring presence we’re trying to create on the surface”.

If the mission proceeds as planned, the crew consisting NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will fly around the Moon and back in their nearly 10-day expedition, putting the spacecraft through its paces while venturing deeper into space than humans have ever gone.

The mission is the debut crewed test flight in the Artemis programme, the successor to NASA’s Cold War-era Apollo project, and the world’s first to send astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon, out of Earth’s orbit, in 53 years.

It serves as a crucial dress rehearsal for a NASA bid to land humans on the lunar surface later this decade, after one more crewed mission around the Moon.

NASA is targeting 2028 for Artemis IV, a first-ever landing of astronauts on the Moon’s South Pole, seeking to beat China’s planned crewed mission to the same lunar region as early as 2030.

The last time astronauts walked on the Moon – a feat so far achieved only by the US – was the final Apollo mission in 1972.

‘For all humanity’

After nearly three years of training, the crew is the first to fly in NASA’s Artemis programme, a multibillion-dollar venture established in 2017 to build up a long-term US presence on the moon over the next decade and beyond, serving as a stepping stone to eventual missions to Mars.

Minutes before lift-off, Canadian astronaut Hansen, strapped inside Orion, told mission control in Houston: “This is Jeremy, we are going for all humanity.”

Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said: “Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, on this historic mission 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 a new generation.” She added: “Good luck, godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go.”

A few hours after lift-off, the upper stage of the SLS rocket successfully separated from the Lockheed Martin-made Orion capsule and its propulsion module.

The crew then began work on an early test objective: manually steering the spacecraft around the upper stage to demonstrate its manoeuvrability, should its default automated controls ever fail.

The April 1 lift-off was a major milestone more than a decade in the making for the US space agency’s SLS rocket, handing its core contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman long-sought validation that the launch system can safely loft humans into space.

NASA has increasingly relied on newer, cheaper rockets from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX and others to send astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

The crew’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, built for NASA by Lockheed Martin, was designed to separate from the SLS upper stage 3½ hours into flight in Earth’s orbit.

The crew, which went through nearly three years of training, was then expected to take manual control of Orion to test its steering and manoeuvrability around the detached upper stage, attempting the first of dozens of test objectives planned throughout the mission.

The success of the Artemis II flight so far has provided positive talking points for a space agency that lost roughly 20 per cent of its workforce under the Trump administration’s federal downsizing efforts in 2025.

“It’s amazing,” US President Donald Trump said of the launch during a national address about the Iran war. “They are on their way and God bless them, these are brave people. God bless those four unbelievable astronauts.”

Farthest trip in history

The Artemis II mission will send its crew some 406,000km into space – the farthest humans have ever travelled.

The current record for the farthest spaceflight, at roughly 400,000km, is held by the three-man crew of the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, which was beset by technical problems after an oxygen tank exploded and was unable to land on the Moon as planned.

NASA launched its first Artemis mission without crew in 2022, sending the Orion spacecraft on a similar path around the Moon and back.

Artemis II will pose a greater test of Orion and the SLS rocket, a programme partly known for its ballooning costs at an estimated US$2 billion (S$2.6 billion) to US$4 billion per launch.

Mr Musk’s SpaceX and businessman Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to develop the landers that NASA will use to put its astronauts on the lunar surface.

Artemis III had been set to be the agency’s first astronaut Moon landing, but Mr Isaacman in February added an extra test mission before the landing. REUTERS