The Artemis II crew successfully left Earth orbit Thursday, firing Orion’s main engine for nearly six minutes to boost the spacecraft to roughly 24,500 mph — sufficient to escape Earth’s gravity and set a course for the moon. Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen closely monitored the critical trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn, which increased Orion’s orbital speed by about 867 mph.
The service module engine ignited at 7:49 p.m. EDT at an altitude near 115 miles. When it shut down, Orion was on a free‑return trajectory that will carry the crew around the far side of the moon on Monday and then back toward Earth without any further major propulsive maneuvers.
After the burn Hansen radioed, “And Houston, (this is) Integrity. Just wanted to share a little bit of the sentiment up here as we came around the planet and were zooming over just a hundred nautical miles above it, if you’ve got a moment.” Mission control replied, “Please, Jeremy, we’re all ears.” Hansen thanked everyone who helped make Artemis possible and said the crew “firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn.”
Cameras on Orion returned striking images, including a crescent‑Earth shot as the capsule followed a highly elliptical path stretching tens of thousands of miles. Hansen described “a beautiful view of the dark side of the Earth lit by the moon.” Wiseman told reporters the crew had been “glued to the window,” taking pictures and watching as mission controllers briefly reoriented the spacecraft during sunset — a maneuver that revealed the entire globe from pole to pole, Africa and Europe, and even the Northern Lights, a sight that left the four astronauts in silent awe.
Wiseman called the TLI tense but successful. “There is nothing normal about this. Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a Herculean effort, and we are now just realizing the gravity of that,” he said.
Launched Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center, the crew spent their first day testing Orion’s systems, checking maneuverability and fine‑tuning their orbit to align for the free‑return path. NASA’s Mission Management Team reviewed the vehicle’s near‑flawless performance and cleared the ship and crew for the burn. Lead flight director Jeff Radigan gave the go; Hansen replied, “Alright, Jeff. We love those words. And we’re loving the view. We’re falling back to Earth real fast and looking forward to accelerating back to the moon.”
Artemis II is the first crewed flight of the Lockheed Martin‑built Orion and the first group bound for the moon since Apollo’s final mission in December 1972. The crew is expected to travel farther from Earth than any humans before, reaching about 252,021 miles behind the moon — roughly 3,366 miles farther than the Apollo 13 record.
Beyond proving Orion’s performance, Artemis II will exercise procedures, planning and flight‑control protocols needed for future lunar landings after the decades‑long gap since Apollo. NASA calls the mission a pathfinder to demonstrate that Orion can routinely carry astronauts to the moon and back, paving the way for one or more landings near the lunar south pole as soon as 2028.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was present in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He said NASA will fly another Orion crew next year to rehearse rendezvous and docking with lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin; that mission, Artemis III, will take place in low‑Earth orbit. Isaacman also outlined plans to invest $20 billion over seven years to accelerate launch cadence, with a goal of lunar landings every six months while building a base near the moon’s south pole.