NASA launched the crewed Artemis II mission Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center, sending four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, nicknamed Integrity, on a planned flight toward lunar vicinity.
The Space Launch System core stage and its RS-25 main engines produced a powerful liftoff, with the pad’s sound-suppression water system active and a visible, thunderous wall of exhaust felt by observers nearby. Flight commentary reported steady early performance: roughly 30 seconds after liftoff Integrity was already several miles up and accelerating quickly; by the supersonic pass near 90 seconds the vehicle had topped about 2,600 mph.
Controllers described guidance convergence, main-engine throttle adjustments and routine separation events. The twin solid rocket boosters burned out and jettisoned near the two-minute mark, while the core stage continued its burn to place the stack into an initial parking orbit. Telemetry and on‑board cameras confirmed planned staging and hardware actions, including jettisoned panels on the service module and the readiness of upper‑stage attitude‑control thrusters.
Flight controllers in Houston reported nominal systems performance and noted the mission’s ‘‘three‑engine press’’ contingency margin — meaning the flight could continue even if one RS‑25 were lost by burning the remaining engines longer to make up velocity.
Orion and its interim upper stage were expected to settle into an elliptical Earth orbit before executing further maneuvers. That higher apogee is part of the trajectory profile that will later carry the spacecraft into a lunar flyby phase.
Inside the capsule, astronauts shared views of the rising Moon; commander Reid Wiseman called a “beautiful moonrise” as the crew climbed above the horizon, a small but poignant reminder of the mission’s larger purpose: returning humans beyond low Earth orbit. Ground commentators compared the SLS/Orion liftoff to the Shuttle era — a different, even more powerful impulse with deep acoustic and atmospheric effects.
As the vehicle reached its initial orbit and mission control assumed routine tracking, teams began the sequence of systems checks and planned burns that will govern Orion’s path toward the Moon. Artemis II, the first Artemis flight to carry a crew, will exercise Orion systems and operations with four astronauts aboard and set the stage for later missions aimed at returning humans to the lunar surface.