NASA set to launch Artemis II lunar mission

What happened

NASA on Wednesday morning appeared on track to launch its Artemis II mission in the evening, sending four astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972’s Apollo 17. There’s “an 80% chance of favorable weather conditions,” NASA said, and no apparent problems with the SLS rocket and Orion capsule set to take astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen around the moon and back.

Who said what

A “successful mission” would be a “crucial step” for NASA as it “seeks to return to the moon’s surface” and “validate technology” needed to travel “even further,” The Washington Post said. The “dwindling survivors of NASA’s greatest generation” are “thrilled that NASA is finally going back,” The Associated Press said. And the “power brokers in Washington” insist it’s a “vital national imperative” to beat China to the moon, The New York Times said. But “people on the street” tell pollsters they want NASA to “monitor” Earth-bound asteroids and “key parts of the Earth’s climate system,” while sending humans back to the moon ranks only above sending them to Mars.

What next?

“If all goes as planned,” AP said, the 10-day mission will take the four astronauts farther from Earth than anyone has ever gone, followed by a “six-hour flyby” of “never-before-seen regions of the lunar far side.”

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