Four astronauts are scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday evening, beginning a 10-day journey around the moon that will mark the first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch at 6:24pm ET aboard NASA's Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful ever built, carrying the Orion capsule that will take them on a sweeping arc around Earth and the moon before returning home.
The crew will not land on the lunar surface; the mission is designed as a critical test of the Orion capsule and its systems ahead of a planned lunar landing on the Artemis IV mission in 2028, and ultimately NASA's goal of establishing a long-term human presence on the moon.
"I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again," Wiseman said on Friday after the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center. "We are really pumped to go do this."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described Artemis II as a test flight above all else, telling NBC News: "No humans have ever flown on that rocket before. Our four astronauts will go out, put the spacecraft through its paces."
The crew has nicknamed their spacecraft Integrity, a word Wiseman said captured the principle that guided the team throughout training: "You can be in integrity and you can be out of integrity. And so for us, as the first crew of Artemis, we strive every day to be in integrity."
Around eight and a half minutes after liftoff, the astronauts will be in orbit. The first day of the mission will be spent circling Earth while testing Orion's life-support systems, including temperature regulation, air quality, water, food and waste management.
On the second day, the spacecraft's main engines are expected to fire to set a course for the moon. Over the following four days the crew will test Orion's radiation shielding and run through emergency procedures in preparation for future Artemis flights.
Assuming a successful launch, the crew is scheduled to circle the moon on 6 April, passing within approximately 6,000 miles of the lunar surface and potentially travelling farther from Earth than any human in history, surpassing the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970.
NASA said the crew will spend most of the lunar flyby taking photographs, recording video and logging observations, with some regions of the moon to be seen up close by human eyes for the first time.
The capsule is then expected to begin its return journey, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on 10 April.
NASA plans to stream the launch live on its YouTube channel, with coverage beginning at 12:50pm ET on Wednesday.