NASA Launches Artemis II Crew on Test Flight Around Moon

In perhaps the most ambitious space mission of the last 5 decades, NASA is sending 4 astronauts around the moon and back ... the historic launch blasted off from Florida and the astronauts are now in space.

So far, everything appears to be going smoothly ... Artemis II lifted off Wednesday afternoon from Cape Canaveral and the astronauts are now in their capsule in high Earth orbit.

The lunar flyby mission -- named Artemis II -- is a test flight, acting as just one more step towards the future goal of not just visiting the moon, but staying there.

NASA is planning to focus on designing a moon base where astronauts can spend weeks or months at a time carrying out research and technology development.

There are many firsts projected for this test flight ... if successful, mission specialist Christina Koch will be the first woman to travel to the moon, pilot Victor Glover will be the first Black man to make the trip, and astronaut Jeremy Hansen will be the first Canadian to do so. They'll be accompanied by Commander Reid Wiseman.

And if everything goes well, everyone in the crew will become the first humans to see large portions of the moon's far side.

While Artemis I launched an unmanned Orion capsule into orbit around the moon back in November 2022, this year's mission aims to test Orion's life-support systems.

The flight is expected to last nine and a half days with the crew circling the moon -- without landing on it -- then returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.