The Artemis II crew is in quarantine ahead of a launch scheduled for Wednesday. If all goes well, the crew will fly around the far side of the moon, going farther from Earth than any human in history. Mark Strassmann reports.
NASA says it is ready to send four astronauts on a journey around the moon. This massive rocket will get them there, launched from the same pad as the historic Apollo missions. CBS’s Mark Strassmann at the Kennedy Space Center is following every detail.
“Hey, Jericka. All the signs here sure look promising. The rocket’s ready to fly. The astronauts are here in quarantine. NASA is on the edge of a new era of human spaceflight,” Strassmann said.
Destination ahead for Artemis II: the far side of the moon. “We are getting very, very close,” he added, summarizing NASA updates.
Sunday’s update from NASA’s Lori Glaze was upbeat. “Our flight systems are ready. The ground systems are ready. Our launch and operations teams are ready, and our flight operations team in Houston are also ready,” she said.
NASA is hoping to lift off on Wednesday, the start of a six-day launch window. Artemis II’s crew will orbit Earth twice on their first day, then head off for the moon. They won’t land; they’ll fly around its far side, pushing farther from Earth than humans ever have — about 253,000 miles — before looping back to Earth.
This nine-day mission ends with a splashdown off the San Diego coast, a practice run for an eventual moon landing planned for 2028. “We do look at it as a test flight,” a NASA official said.
Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, noted the risks and purpose: “If we weren’t willing to take risks, we’d never leave the planet. So we have got to go take risk to take humans further off the planet, off to the moon, off to Mars… this is what we signed up for. And myself, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy are in a position to go do that, and we have to seize that moment.”
The Artemis II launch is expected to draw a large crowd to the Kennedy Space Center — officials estimate around 400,000 spectators.