The team includes Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
“We have a beautiful moonrise. We’re headed right at it,” said Wiseman, the mission commander.
US President Donald Trump praised “our brave astronauts,” calling the successful launch “quite something” at the beginning of a televised address on the war against Iran.
The astronauts are now in orbit around the Earth, where they will remain while performing various checks to ensure the reliability and safety of a spacecraft that has never carried humans before. They will also test its manual piloting capabilities during docking simulations.
Early on, teams identified a number of kinks to work out, including “a controller issue with the toilet when they spun it up,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, during a post-launch briefing.
“We’re just getting started,” he added.
NASA head Jared Isaacman also noted a temporary communication problem with the spacecraft that had since been resolved as crews worked to determine the cause.
But Isaacman said the astronauts were “safe, they’re secure, and they’re in great spirits.”
He also emphasized the historic nature of Wednesday’s launch: “NASA is back in the business of sending people to the Moon.”
If all goes well, the Artemis 2 team is expected to head out on Thursday on its three-day journey towards the Moon, then loop back to capture new images and make naked-eye observations.
The expedition should last approximately 10 days in total and aims to pave the way for a Moon landing in 2028.
Sian Proctor, an American scientist who participated in a 2021 space mission, ventured to Florida’s Space Coast to witness the moment along with the approximately 400,000 people local authorities said had gathered to watch.
“I’m just so happy that we’re going back to the Moon, and everybody should be excited and be following the next 10 days, because this is a big step for humanity,” Proctor said.
The mission marks a series of historic accomplishments: it will send the first person of color, the first woman, and the first non-American on a lunar mission.
If the plan proceeds as expected, the astronauts will set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before.
It is also the inaugural crewed flight of NASA’s new lunar rocket, dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS).
It is designed to enable the United States to repeatedly return to the Moon, with the goal of establishing a permanent base that will serve as a platform for further exploration.
It was meant to take off as early as February after years of delays and massive cost overruns.
But repeated setbacks stalled it and even necessitated rolling the rocket back to its hangar for investigation and repairs.
“NASA really needs this win right now,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, told AFP, noting the space agency’s recent budget turmoil and a workforce exodus that have challenged morale.
The current era of American lunar investment has often been portrayed as an effort to compete with China, which aims to land humans on the Moon by 2030.
During the post-launch briefing, Isaacman said competition was “a great way to mobilize the resources of a nation.”
“Competition can be a good thing,” he said. “And we certainly have competition now.”
The Artemis program has come under pressure from Trump, who has accelerated its pace in hopes that boots will hit the lunar surface before his second term ends in early 2029.
But the projected 2028 landing date has raised eyebrows among experts, in part because Washington is relying on the private sector’s technological advances.
Earlier in the day, Trump had said on Truth Social that the US is “WINNING.”
“Economically, Militarily, and now, BEYOND THE STARS. Nobody comes close! America doesn’t just compete, we DOMINATE, and the whole World is watching,” he posted.
Second Space Race
In the 1960s, the US won the space race to the Moon, defeating the USSR.
The first country to install a nuclear reactor on the moon could have access to a regular power supply, which would help establish a permanent settlement there.
NASA has been discussing building a reactor on the lunar surface, but this would set a more definitive timeline for the ambitious project, which could be the first step toward establishing human colonies on the Moon and, further out, on Mars and even in deep space.
“To properly advance this critical technology to be able to support a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space, it is imperative that the agency move quickly,” Duffy wrote in the directive, according to the New York Times.
One lunar day is equivalent to four weeks on Earth, which means two weeks of continuous sunshine, followed by two weeks of cold darkness. These extended timelines mean that spacecraft and colonies could not rely entirely on solar power to recharge their batteries. Hence, there is a need for a nuclear reactor to generate power on the Moon.
Furthermore, the directive orders the agency to solicit industry proposals for a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor to launch by 2030. NASA has previously funded research into lunar nuclear reactors, but those projects were for a much smaller reactor, a 40-kilowatt reactor.
“Building even a modest lunar habitat to accommodate a small crew would demand megawatt-scale power generation. Solar arrays and batteries alone cannot reliably meet those demands,” Dr. Sungwoo Lim, senior lecturer in space applications, exploration, and instrumentation at the University of Surrey, said.
“Nuclear energy is not just desirable, it is inevitable,” he added.
The directive underscores that China and Russia are already working to deploy a reactor to the moon by the mid-2030s as part of a partnership to build a base there. If that happens, the directive warns, China and Russia “could potentially declare a keep-out zone” that would inhibit what the United States could do there.
Earlier, the head of Russia’s space agency disclosed plans for a joint project with China to establish a nuclear power plant on the moon by 2035. In a lecture, Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov disclosed that Russia and China were seriously considering installing a nuclear power reactor on the lunar surface between 2033 and 2035.
The collaborative effort stems from a memorandum of mutual understanding signed in March 2021 between Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos and the China National Space Administration (CNSA), which outlines cooperation to establish the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
Via APF and ET Online Desk
