The first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Artemis II, successfully launched at 00:35 Thursday, South African time. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft and its service module lifted off from the Kennedy Space Centre’s Launch Pad 39B, located in the state of Florida. Artemis II is carrying a crew of four: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Koch is the first woman, and Glover the first African-American, to head to the Moon, while Hansen is a Canadian (Canadian Space Agency), and so the first non-American on a Moon mission. Wiseman, Glover and Koch are all experienced astronauts, with Koch having accumulated the greatest time in space (just over 328.5 days, which is the women’s record). For Hansen, this is his first space flight.
