Artemis II historical milestones are expected to be established tonight

“The four of us have been looking at the Moon all our lives, and the way we react to what we see out the window is like children who can’t get enough of it. It’s amazing,” Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission, told the control center as the Orion spacecraft approached the Moon. He and his teammates – pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – will be the first people to observe the Moon up close since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

NASA said there are 10 science goals and 35 other goals that the crew needs to work toward. The crew will work in two-person shifts during the five-hour main phase of the loop flight. They used the Lunar Target Planning app on a tablet to record acoustic observations, and took thousands of photos of the celestial body’s craters, plains and mountains.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft left the launch pad on the evening of April 1 (5:35 a.m., April 2, Hanoi time) to take the Artemis II crew into space, performing NASA’s first manned mission to the Moon after 54 years. The crew was said to “represent the world”, when for the first time women, people of color and non-American members flew to the Moon.