NASA’s Artemis II mission has departed Earth orbit for a lunar flyby following a successful translunar injection (TLI) burn. The Orion spacecraft, carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, fired its main orbital maneuvering engine for approximately six minutes starting at 7:49 p.m. EDT (2349 GMT).
Prior to the burn, mission teams conducted extensive systems checks on the rocket and Orion vehicle, validating parameters and resolving a pre-launch issue with the Eastern Range’s flight termination system communication. The crew performed a manual piloting demonstration using the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) as a docking target, followed by an automated departure burn. About 49 minutes after liftoff, the SLS rocket’s upper stage placed Orion into a high elliptical Earth orbit extending 46,000 miles for 24 hours of checkouts.
“With that successful TLI, the crew is feeling pretty good up here on our way to the moon, and we just wanted to communicate to everyone around the planet who’s worked to make Artemis possible that we firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn,” Hansen said post-burn. The engine, upgraded from space shuttle heritage with 19 prior flights, accelerates like a car from zero to 60 mph in 2.7 seconds.
Orion is now on a free-return trajectory, looping around the moon without major additional maneuvers, entering its sphere of influence for a swingby before returning to a Pacific splashdown on mission day 10. Koch becomes the first woman, Glover the first person of color, and Hansen the first non-American to venture beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The test validates systems for future Artemis landings, including Artemis 4 in 2028.