Artemis II Crew Head to Moon in Historic Mission
The pivotal maneuver came hours after NASA's mission managers cleared the crew for a critical engine burn, according to media.
At approximately 7:50 pm EDT (23:50 GMT), the shuttle-era Orbital Maneuvering System engine — housed at the base of Orion's service module — fired for nearly six minutes as the spacecraft passed through the lowest point of its elliptical orbit. The controlled burn acted as a gravitational slingshot, catapulting Orion to approximately 25,000 miles (40,233 kilometers) per hour — sufficient velocity to overcome Earth's gravitational pull and begin the four-day transit to the Moon.
Earlier Thursday, NASA's Mission Management Team (MMT) conducted a thorough review of Orion's near-flawless performance before formally authorizing the trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn — the decisive maneuver that commits the spacecraft to its lunar flyby trajectory.
The lead flight director delivered the long-awaited clearance to the crew, stating: "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 mission's sole Canadian crew member responded with undisguised enthusiasm, saying: "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."
The milestone follows NASA's successful Wednesday launch of the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida — the agency's first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years. All four astronauts reached orbit safely aboard Orion, now bound for a 10-day round-trip journey around the Moon. The crew — comprising three American astronauts and one Canadian — is tasked with rigorously testing the critical systems that will underpin the next era of human deep-space exploration.
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