What happened
For the first time in more than half a century, Nasa has dispatched astronauts to the Moon, although this mission will stop short of a surface landing. Artemis II lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center after a brief delay to resolve minor technical concerns. Four crew members – US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen – are now on a 10-day journey looping around the Moon before returning to the Earth.
Who said what
“We have a beautiful moonrise and we’re headed right at it,” said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, from the spacecraft shortly after launch.
This mission “will usher in a new era of discovery”, said Oliver Morton in The Telegraph. Artemis is a “truly unifying international project”, said Christopher Riley in The Guardian, “one of the few we have left”.
The multinational crew also represents several milestones, including the first woman, the first Black astronaut and the first Canadian to undertake a lunar fly-by.
What next?
“All of this is rehearsal for what comes much later in Nasa’s grand plans for a long-term presence on the lunar surface,” said the BBC’s science correspondent Pallab Ghosh. If successful, Artemis II will pave the way for a landing mission later this decade, potentially involving spacecraft developed by SpaceX or Blue Origin. Future crews could reach the lunar surface as early as 2028, re-establishing a human foothold after decades confined to orbit. |
