Artemis II with 4 astronauts aboard heads to Moon, with return set for San Diego
Dante Ulanday - News Moderator 
The first crewed flight to the Moon in nearly 54 years blasted off from Florida on a 10-day mission that will end with a splashdown off San Diego.
The main engines and solid rocket boosters of the giant Space Launch System rocket ignited at 3:35 p.m. Pacific time, sending NASA’s Artemis II mission on it’s way to the Moon.
The crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, had boarded the Orion capsule some four hours earlier.
Artemis II will follow a “free return” trajectory, with the Moon’s gravity slinging the Orion capsule back toward Earth, where it will re-enter the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour.
After splashdown, the Navy will recover the crew and spacecraft using a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship from Naval Base San Diego.
Both NASA and SpaceX are now recovering crewed spacecraft in the Pacific off San Diego County.
The mission is the second test flight in NASA’s return to the Moon. The uncrewed Artemis I mission, using a similar rocket and capsule, flew to the moon in late 2022 in a successful test flight.
Artemis III in 2027 will be another test mission, with Artemis IV in early 2028 expected to be the first crewed landing since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
