Commander Reid Wiseman, a 50-year-old Navy captain and former test pilot, calmly radioed updates from the cockpit of the Orion spacecraft at the tip of the SLS rocket. He was joined in the cockpit by pilot Victor Glover (another Navy captain), mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The crew on the 10-day Artemis II mission won't land on the Moon, but plan to circle it, and could travel further from Earth than anyone has ever been before.

Follow along live as NASA sends astronauts into the moon's orbit with the launch of its key Artemis II mission on April 1.

Carrying three Americans and one Canadian, the 32-story rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the dawn of this new era.

NASA's Artemis II astronauts launched Wednesday, April 1, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending America back to the moon for first time since 1972.

NASA's first manned Moon mission in over 50 years experienced a temporary communication issue during historic launch from Cape Canaveral

Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo’s explorers to the moon so long ago. The handful still alive cheered this next generation’s grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky, a nearly full moon beckoning some 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.