Artemis II will fly astronauts around moon: What to know about launch

NASA's Artemis II test flight launches Wednesday evening from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying astronauts on the first crewed journey toward the moon since the Apollo era ended in the early 1970s. The uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022 validated the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, paving the way for this crewed test that will evaluate life support systems and other critical hardware in the lunar environment. Wednesday's 6:24 p.m. ET launch represents a major milestone in NASA's broader effort to establish sustained human presence on the moon and eventually Mars. The mission will send four astronauts on a multi-week flight that circles the moon but does not land on its surface—a precursor to future landing missions planned for subsequent Artemis flights. Success in this test is essential to NASA's deep space exploration timeline and demonstrates the agency's capacity to return humans to lunar operations after a 50-year gap.