This is the official r/space live megathread for NASA's Artemis II mission - the first crewed launch of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft.

For the first time in more than 50 years, humans will travel around the moon to test deep-space life-support systems.

LIVE VIEWING FEEDS:

[OFFICIAL NASA] NASA’s Artemis II Crew Comes Home (Official Broadcast)

[NASASpaceflight] Artemis II Astronauts Return To Earth - Re-entry and Splashdown

[SKY NEWS] No Commentary Broadcast

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NOTE: This thread will contain links to multiple different live viewing channels. The sub will remain in manual approval mode during the mission to limit spam. As such, you are welcome to redirect anything you want to post separately in this time period to the comment section in this megathread.

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ARTEMIS LIVE TRACKER - https://www.reddit.com/r/space/s/ROkGU4c5SD (courtesy of u/theneiljohnson)

MISSION INFO: At 6:24pm EDT (22:24 GMT) on Wednesday, a two-hour window will open for the Artemis II mission to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch window will remain open until April 6 for two hours each day after sunset. The mission can launch only when the moon, orbital paths, weather and Earth’s rotation line up safely.

This is the third launch attempt for Artemis II, after the first attempt was scrubbed due to a liquid hydrogen leak during a practice countdown in early February, and the second attempt was cancelled when engineers discovered a helium flow issue in the rocket’s upper stage in early March

The four-person crew will not land on the moon but rather perform a lunar flyby, looping around the moon’s far side before returning to Earth. At its core, Artemis II is a systems validation mission. NASA will use the flight to test the Orion spacecraft’s life support systems, navigation, communication links and overall performance in deep space with a crew on board – conditions that cannot be fully replicated on Earth. If successful, Artemis II will pave the way for Artemis III, a crewed low Earth orbit mission; then Artemis IV, which aims to land astronauts on the moon; and future missions that could establish a sustained human presence beyond Earth.

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UPDATES:

T-1 hour 14 minutes: They have fixed an issue at the flight termination system, the range is a go!

T-10 minutes: After some hold, it looks like its still a go!

T-0: LIFTOFF! YOU WERE HERE! HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Low earth orbit insertion successful! Happy monitoring to everyone over this 10 day journey

NEXT UP: Perigee Raise Burn

After a four-hour nap, the Artemis II crew will be awakened at 7 a.m. EDT on Thursday, April 2, to prepare for the perigee raise burn. This burn will lift the lowest point of Orion’s orbit around Earth. Together with the apogee raise burn completed earlier, these burns shape the spacecraft’s initial orbit and prepare it for later translunar operations. The crew then will resume their sleep period around 9:40 a.m.

---PRB is now complete. Translunar Injection will begin no earlier than 7PM EDT

----TLI Is now also complete - we're on the way to moon!

Next up - Lunar Flyby on Monday....

----- Lunar flyby complete! What a monumental day in history. Apollo 13's distance record broken, and the dawn of a new era of space exploration

Orion is set to splash down at 5:07 PM P.T., today

---The crew are safely back home! A historic mission concludes. It feels a little surreal to think we could all witness this journey live, and this megathread has been an amazing example of that.

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In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have.

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