HISTORY has been made as the Artemis II mission thundered out of Earth’s orbit to start its three-day journey to the Moon.
After launching from the NASA Kennedy Space Centre, the 32-story rocket – the mightiest ever built – stuck close to home for the first 25 hours of its 10-day test flight.
Carrying three Americans and a Canadian on board, the main engine has now been fired to propel them to the Moon.
Mission specialist Christina Koch has spent her morning bracing herself for the big event of the day – the translunar injection burn (TLI).
Engineers back on Earth can now breathe a sigh of relief as this is the last major engine firing of the Artemis II.
NASA said the capsule, named Orion, will perform multiple maneuvers to then place the crew on a lunar free-return trajectory.
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This means the Earth’s gravity will naturally pull it back home after flying around the Moon.
Watch The Sun’s livestream of the Artemis II mission here
This is also when the astronauts will remove their spacesuits and don plain clothes for the rest of the mission, aside from when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and are recovered from the ocean.
The crew won’t pause for a stopover or orbit the Moon like Apollo 8’s first lunar visitors did so famously on Christmas Eve 1968.
But the four astronauts stand to become the most distant humans ever when their capsule zooms past the Moon.
They will then continue another 4,000 miles beyond, before making a U-turn and tearing straight home to a splashdown in the Pacific.
All of NASA’s moon plans – a surge in launches over the next several years leading to a sustainable moon base for astronauts assisted by robotic rovers and drones – hinge on this mission going well.
“There’s always been a lot riding on this mission,” NASA’s Lori Glaze said ahead of launch.
Artemis II’s mission is lengthy, and the margin for error small. And every decision the crew makes could be the difference between life and death for them.
There are a number of inherent dangers.
NASA has refused to release its risk assessment, but managers contend it is better than 50-50 – the usual odds for a new rocket.
Disasters have plagued the Artemis II mission since day one of the ground tests.
The Space Launch System rocket leaked highly flammable hydrogen fuel – a recurring problem that engineers still do not completely understand.
The leaks and unrelated helium blockages delayed the flight by more than two months, coming on top of years of vexing delays and cost overruns.
To NASA’s relief, Wednesday’s countdown was leak-free, but there was a flurry of last-minute technical issues – bad battery sensors and an inability to get commands through to the rocket’s flight termination system.
In both cases, the issues were quickly resolved, allowing the launch to proceed.
It was shortly after take-off that the spacecraft toilet was hit by an embarrassing fault shortly after take-off.
A blinking fault light alerted the crew that a fan – essential due to zero gravity, pulling in waste so it doesn’t float around the cabin – was “jammed”.
The Orion capsule is the first ever to feature a real loo used on a deep space mission, instead of poo bags used on the Apollo missions in the 60s and 70s.
Temperature was one of the crew’s biggest concerns earlier.
Koch was heard asking mission control: “It is very cold in the cabin, any chance you can make it warmer, or reduce the cabin fan speed a bit more so the ventilation is not blowing as hard?”
The control team said that while the crew were asleep they turned one of the knobs and saw a slight temperature increase.
“We’re going to take a look at some of these shell heaters and we’ll let you know when we start putting some of that in work and we can see if that affects the temperature in a positive way,” mission control said.