NASA’s Artemis II crew is now officially on its way to the Moon after Orion’s service module engine fired on April 2, 2026, for the translunar injection burn, the mission-defining maneuver that sent the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and onto its outbound path toward a lunar flyby.
Mission control and the crew both polled “go” ahead of the burn, which NASA had said would last about five minutes.
With the successful maneuver, Artemis II became humanity’s first crewed mission bound for the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA’s published mission timeline shows Orion is scheduled to make its closest pass by the Moon on flight day six.
The four astronauts aboard Orion, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, are expected to reach the Moon around April 6.
During the flyby, Orion is expected to pass roughly 4,000 to 6,000 miles above the lunar surface as it swings around the far side before using the Moon’s gravity to begin the trip back to Earth. The mission is expected to take the crew farther from Earth than any humans have traveled before, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
The mission’s first full day in space was not entirely glitch-free. NASA said Orion’s toilet developed a fault shortly after the crew reached orbit on April 1, prompting troubleshooting with mission control. The agency later said the crew and ground teams restored the system to normal operation.
A second issue involved onboard email. NASA said the astronauts encountered a Microsoft Outlook problem on their personal computers, with both the older and newer versions of the program generating errors.
For people on the ground, the combination of a plumbing problem and trouble opening Outlook sounded all too familiar.
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