Spaceflight NOW

The latest space-flight news, reported by Steven Young.

Atowering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on 1 April, carrying four astronauts on a voyage to loop around the Moon and back. The history-making mission came just a week after NASA announced a major reboot of its lunar exploration programme. After a two-month delay caused by a liquid hydrogen leak and a blocked helium line, the Artemis II mission thundered away from pad 39B into the clear evening sky at 6:35p.m. local time.

The liftoff followed a relatively smooth countdown with the launch team having to resolve just a couple of minor issues that pushed back the planned liftoff by just 11 minutes.

"Good luck, god speed, Artemis II, let's go,” Launch Director Charlie Blackwell Thompson said as she gave the final approval to proceed with the launch.

Aboard the Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket were mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

“We are going for all humanity,” Hansen, a Canadian astronaut, told the launch controllers.

Just over eight minutes after leaving the launch pad, the four hydrogen-fuelled core stage engines shut down.

The rocket’s upper stage then placed Orion into a highly elliptical Earth orbit 43,760 miles from Earth at its highest point.

As this issue of Astronomy Now goes to press, 17 hours into the mission, the astronauts were sleeping before the crucial trans-lunar injection burn to send them on their way out of Earth orbit on a path that will take them around the Moon. If all goes according to plan, they will fly farther from Earth than any other space crew, surpassing a record set by the Apollo 13 astronauts.

Just eight days earlier, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman unveiled ambitious new goals for the Artemis programme, cancelling a much delayed and over-budget second launch pad and pausing plans for an orbiting lunar space station, called Gateway. Instead, he said the agency would focus on the creation of a moon base, that would be serviced by pressurised rovers and nuclear power systems. He estimated the venture would cost $20 billion over seven years.

As part of its new exploration strategy, NASA also announced plans for a 2028 launch to send a batch of autonomous drones to Mars on a nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft.