Artemis II countdown & launch: Full liftoff video. April 1, 2026, 22:35:12 UTC (6:35:12 pm EDT)

Hope it's not an April Fools joke... : ) Cynthia

Artemis II is an ongoing lunar flyby mission under the Artemis program, that launched on April 1, 2026, from the Kennedy Space Center. The ten-day mission.

It is the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, and the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The Video & the following description, from CNN.

The Artemis II lifts off from launch pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The historic and risky lunar venture will mark the first time astronauts have returned to the vicinity of the moon in more than 50 years. The mission could break the distance record set by the Apollo program, traveling farther from Earth than any human ever has. The crew includes NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen. 

0:00 Booster ignition, umbilical separation, and liftoff 0:24 SLS clears the launch tower and initiates a roll/pitch maneuver 1:40 Confirmation that crew and shuttle have gone supersonic 2:31 Solid rocket booster separation 3:45 Launch abort system jettison 8:20 SLS core stage main engine cutoff & separation