Humanity Leaves Earth Orbit

NASA's Artemis 2 mission has cleared its most critical milestone on the way to the moon. On April 2 at 7:49 p.m. EDT, the Orion spacecraft fired its main engine for 5 minutes and 50 seconds in a translunar injection (TLI) burn, successfully departing Earth orbit. The single maneuver placed Orion on a trajectory to loop around the moon and return to Earth without any further major burns required.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen addressed the world moments after the burn: "With that successful TLI, the crew is feeling pretty good up here on our way to the moon. To everyone who worked to make Artemis possible — we firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn."

First Crewed Lunar Mission Since Apollo 17

Artemis 2 is the first crewed mission to visit the moon since Apollo 17 landed on the lunar surface in December 1972. The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Hansen.

The mission is simultaneously writing multiple pages of history. Koch becomes the first woman ever to leave low Earth orbit, while Glover is the first person of color and Hansen the first non-American to do so — a stark contrast to the Apollo era, when all astronauts were white American men.

The Journey Ahead

Orion launched on Wednesday, April 1, from Kennedy Space Center aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The crew spent over 24 hours in Earth orbit running system checks before mission managers gave the green light for TLI.

The main engine used for the burn was salvaged from NASA's space shuttle program and upgraded for lunar missions — it has flown 19 times on three different shuttles. Around mission day six, Orion will loop around the moon and break the record distance from Earth set by the Apollo 13 crew, who reached approximately 400,171 kilometers before an in-flight emergency aborted their landing.