NASA's Historic Lunar Mission Launch, in Photos.

The article focuses on NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the first crewed lunar journey in 53 years. The mission involves four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule, embarking on a projected 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth. Artemis II is set to break the record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, while also achieving demographic milestones with Koch as the first woman, Glover as the first person of color, and Hansen as the first non-American to travel to the moon. The spacecraft will follow a figure-eight trajectory, including two Earth orbits before looping around the moon's far side and returning.