CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — NASA astronauts aboard the Artemis II spacecraft executed a successful engine burn Thursday night, sending the crew on a trajectory toward the moon for the first crewed lunar mission since 1972.
The translunar injection occurred about 25 hours after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center, propelling the Orion capsule out of Earth orbit and toward a lunar flyby scheduled for early next week. The mission carries four astronauts—three Americans and one Canadian—on a 10-day test flight.
NASA officials confirmed the engine firing proceeded as planned, placing the spacecraft on a path nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth. The crew includes commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.
Mission managers kept the spacecraft in Earth orbit for about a day to test onboard systems before approving the burn. The capsule is now following a free-return trajectory that will loop around the moon and return to Earth without landing.
During the mission, the crew is expected to travel farther from Earth than any previous human spaceflight, surpassing the distance record set during Apollo 13 in 1970. The spacecraft will pass approximately 4,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon before heading back, with splashdown targeted for April 10.
NASA said the mission serves as a key test for its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a sustained human presence on the moon later this decade.