JERICKA DUNCAN: Tonight, the 322-foot rocket set to launch Artemis II stands ready on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center. It’s set for liftoff Wednesday on the first crewed moonshot in more than a half century. CBS’s Mark Strassmann is there for all the excitement with more on the mission. Mark, good to see you.
MARK STRASSMANN: Good to see you too, Jericka. With this launch, NASA will link the words “astronaut” and “moonshot” for the first time since 1972 and Apollo 17. This new era for NASA is starting to feel very real around here.
PERSON OFF-CAMERA: Hey. Let’s go to the moon!
MARK STRASSMANN: Ask Commander Reid Wiseman here in Florida. Excitement is in the air because the Artemis II crew is now on the ground. Come this Wednesday, April 1, NASA could launch a new generation of lunar explorers.
What should be the expectations for this mission?
CREW MEMBER (sub): April 1 is not a guarantee. We got to go feel this whole thing out. The rocket is ready. We are ready. NASA is ready.
MARK STRASSMANN: Ready for Artemis II and its Orion capsule’s nine-day test flight, a half-million-mile round trip. The crew of four will never land on the moon, but loop around its far side, then return to Earth for a splashdown off the San Diego coast. Jeff Radigan, the mission’s lead flight director, defined for us what success means for this test flight.
JEFF RADIGAN: Success of the mission honestly is getting the crew past the moon and home. To be fully successful, we need to get the crew to the moon.
OTHER CREW MEMBER: That’s the standard.
JEFF RADIGAN: That’s the standard. It’s go for the gold. We need to complete this mission. There’s really no signposts. There’s nobody to check your work. There’s no one you can say, hey, did I get this answer right? We just have to have confidence that we did the work correctly.
MARK STRASSMANN: Artemis II’s moonshot aims to prepare NASA for an eventual moon landing. That will be Artemis IV, scheduled for early 2028.
NASA OFFICIAL: That is what we are here for — how do we get our friends on the surface of the moon as fast as humanly possible and as safely as humanly possible?
MARK STRASSMANN: The crew’s makeup will involve a series of firsts — going to the moon for the first time, a Black astronaut, a female astronaut, and a non-American astronaut, a Canadian. In many ways, Jericka, the Apollo era and the Artemis era will feel very, very different.
JERICKA DUNCAN: All those firsts on the 1st, hopefully. Mark Strassmann, thank you.