Artemis II astronauts leave Earth’s orbit, set course for the moon

The Artemis II Orion capsule, carrying a crew of three men and one woman, successfully left Earth’s orbit Thursday evening and set course for the moon.

This came just hours after NASA’s mission managers approved the Artemis II crew for a key engine burn, according to CBS News.

Around 7.50 pm EDT (2350GMT), the shuttle-era Orbital Maneuvering System engine, located at the base of Orion’s service module, ignited for nearly six minutes as the spacecraft passed through the lowest point of its elliptical orbit.

The burn acted like a slingshot, accelerating Orion to roughly 25,000 miles (40,233 kilometers) per hour, fast enough to escape Earth’s gravity and begin its four-day journey to the moon.

Earlier in the day, NASA’s mission management team (MMT) reviewed Orion’s almost flawless performance and gave the go-ahead for the crucial trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn, a decisive step in the mission’s lunar flyby.

"Hey, just to make it clear in the open here, we are go for TLI after the MMT concluded their deliberations a few minutes ago, and we're going to proceed down that path and get ready for the burn here," the lead flight director said.

"We love those words. And we're loving the view. We're falling back to Earth real fast and looking forward to accelerating back to the moon," said the one Canadian astronaut onboard.

The US space agency NASA said Wednesday that its Artemis II mission successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Space Launch System rocket carried four astronauts safely into orbit, with the Orion spacecraft now on course for a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth.

The crew includes three American astronauts and one Canadian on a mission aimed at testing critical systems needed for future human exploration of deep space.