Artemis II countdown begins as NASA returns to the moon TONIGHT

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen have boarded the Orion spacecraft and are hours away from rocketing into space on the Artemis II mission.

The 32-story Space Launch System rocket is set to blast off this evening with a two-hour launch window beginning at 6.24pm ET.

They will hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn and then come straight back over a 10-day period.

The Artemis II crew has revealed the personal items they will carry with them as they circle the moon.

Mission pilot Victor Glover, a devoted Christian and longtime Sunday school teacher, is bringing his Bible.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will carry four moon-shaped pendants, keepsakes he once gave to his wife and children before collecting them back so they could travel with him into deep space.

Commander Reid Wiseman is keeping his choice simple, packing only notepaper and a pencil so he can record his thoughts as he gazes out at Earth and the moon. He is also bringing letters from his two daughters.

Mission specialist Christina Koch will carry handwritten messages from loved ones, saying the notes, touched and written by her family, will hold special meaning as she travels farther from home than she ever has before.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut, told reporters at the Kennedy Space Center today that he is jealous of the Artemis II crew.

‘You know, I texted Reid and Victor yesterday, wishing them well, telling them if they need somebody to step in at the last moment, I’m ready,’ Kelly said.

‘I’m a little jealous, I have to say.’

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will be on board Artemis II.

Wiseman, 50, is a retired Navy captain from Baltimore, Maryland, and will serve as the Artemis II commander.

Glover, 49, is one of NASA’s few black astronauts, a Navy captain, and a former combat pilot from Pomona, California.

Koch is a 47-year-old electrical engineer from Jacksonville, North Carolina. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman – 328 days – and took part in the first all-female spacewalk during her lengthy stay at the space station in 2019.

Hansen, 50, is an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency and will be making his first spaceflight.

He will be serving as his country’s first emissary to the moon and is also a fighter pilot and physicist.

Pictured: Hansen, Glover, Wiseman and Koch

The astronauts are sealed inside the Orion capsule, entering the final stage before humanity’s first trip toward the moon in more than half a century.

After reaching the launch pad, the crew took an elevator high above the ground and signed their names inside the historic ‘white room,’ the last stop before boarding the spacecraft.

With helmets locked and suits adjusted, they climbed into the tight capsule, roughly the size of a small camper van, where they could remain for 10 days if the mission launches on schedule.

Satellite images show NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, ahead of its launch today.

Donald Trump celebrated the Artemis II launch, using it as an opportunity to tout US dominance in space.

‘Tonight at 6.24pm EST, for the first time in over 50 YEARS, America is going back to the Moon! Artemis II, among the most powerful rockets ever built, is launching our Brave Astronauts farther into Deep Space than any human has EVER gone,’ he wrote on Truth Social.

‘We are WINNING, in Space, on Earth, and everywhere in between – Economically, Militarily, and now, BEYOND THE STARS. Nobody comes close! America doesn’t just compete, we DOMINATE, and the whole World is watching.

‘God bless our incredible Astronauts, God bless NASA, and God bless the Greatest Nation ever to exist, the United States of America!’

NASA is hours away from its first crewed mission around the moon in 53 years, leaving one astronaut to have a heartbreaking conversation with his daughters.

Reid Wiseman, commander of Artemis II, is set to launch this afternoon alongside NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen for a 10-day lunar flyby.

Before heading to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Wiseman, 50, took his daughters, Ellie and Katherine, for a walk to prepare them for the event of his death during the mission.

Scientists have raised safety concerns about the Orion capsule’s heat shield ahead of NASA’s long–awaited Artemis II mission.

Set to launch as early as 1 April, the mission will see four astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – blast off on a 10–day mission to the moon.

During the mission, the astronauts will travel around our lunar satellite on board Orion – a cramped capsule measuring just 11ft x 16.5ft.

Now, Ed Macaulay, a lecturer in Physics and Data Science at Queen Mary University of London, has voiced his fears about Orion’s heat shield, which bears the brunt of the searing heat during re–entry through Earth’s atmosphere.