WOW! NASA Artemis II Launches Human to the Moon...Here's What Happened!

3, 2, 1, booster ignition, and liftoff. The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins. Good roll pitch. Roger, roll pitch. Houston, now controlling the flight of Integrity on the Artemis. Integrity, AMT high. Good milestone. Mission Control, Houston, seeing good performance on system core stage. Integrity, 3 miles in altitude. Traveling more than 1,200 miles per hour. Mission elapsed time, passing 1 minute, approaching Max Q. On, positively on. Stan, we have you loud and clear on positively on. Have you the same. Communication signal transformer confirmed as Integrity and its crew go supersonic. Approaching 90 seconds into the Artemis II mission. Integrity is 14 miles in altitude, 8 miles downrange. Traveling more than 2,600 miles per hour. 1 minute, 50 seconds of mission elapsed time. Standing by for main engine throttle down to 85 percent. Ahead of solid rocket booster separation expected at the 2 minute, 9 second mark. We see throttle down. Converged separation. Main engines throttling up. Guidance converged. Integrity, guidance converged. Performance nominal. Upper stage RCS ready. Copy all, Stan. Integrity, SM priming complete. SM priming complete. 2 minutes, 45 seconds of mission elapsed time into the Artemis II mission. Thrusters on Integrity and upper stage confirmed in a ready state. Ahead of service module fairing separation. 3 minutes into the flight. Integrity, 49 miles in altitude, 78 miles downrange. Now passing 5,000 miles per hour. Standing by for launch abort system jettison. Houston, Integrity. Good last jettison. Great view. Copy, jettison. Team Eco, 8 plus 0, 2. We see you the same on board, Stan. And Houston has you loud and clear on TDRS at the common line. Outstanding, Stan. We have you the same. 3 minutes, 50 seconds into the flight of Artemis II. Wiseman, Glover, Cook and Hansen cross the boundary to space with good comm checks. GPS signals acquired after last jettison. Now working on internal checks to verify accuracy. Flight dynamics officer analyzed the time of main engine cutoff confirmed at 8 minutes, 2 seconds. Time of MECO. Integrity, GPS processing. Outstanding, Stan. We see the same and we have a beautiful moonrise. We're headed right at it. Approaching 5 minutes into the flight. Commander Reid Wiseman confirms he has visuals of his destination. GPS guidance navigation and control software finishes internal checks and sends to navigation channels. Integrity, three engine press. Three engine press. On time. Now passing 5 minutes, 20 seconds of mission elapsed time into the Artemis II mission. At this point, three good main engines are all that's needed to carry Integrity to a nominal main engine cutoff target. Though at this time we're seeing four good engines here in Mission Control Houston. Integrity, 75 miles in altitude, 330 miles downrange. Approaching 10,000 miles per hour. Integrity, looking good at 6 minutes. Same on board, Stan. Good trajectory and engine performance. Booster officer will soon report the shutdown plan to Flight Director Judd Friedling expected at the 7 minute mark. Integrity, 78 miles in altitude, 460 miles downrange. Integrity, expect nominal shutdown. Integrity copies nominal shutdown. 6 minutes, 40 seconds of mission elapsed time. Shutdown plan is as expected. Again, the time of MECO was confirmed at 8 minutes, 2 seconds into the flight. 7 minutes of mission elapsed time. Throttling down as we approach the abort once around option. Milestone at the 7 minute, 30 second mark. Now 84 miles in altitude, 650 miles downrange. Traveling more than 15,000 miles per hour. Integrity, AOA open. AOA open. The window is now open for an abort once around option that would target splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Still following nominal ascent at this time. About 10 seconds remaining until the main engine cutoff of the Space Launch System core stage. Standing by for confirmation of MECO and core stage separation. Integrity, nominal MECO, core stage separated. We see the same on board, Stan. 8 minutes, 40 seconds into the flight. We have a nominal main engine cutoff heading in the right trajectory on the way to swing around the moon. Core stage has separated, done its job. Space Launch System upper stage, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS, still attached to the Orion spacecraft. 9 minutes of mission elapsed time. Integrity crew of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cook and Jeremy Hansen now in orbit around the Earth at the beginning of their journey to the moon. Integrity, Houston. Looking ahead to PRM numbers so far per the pad. Copy that, Stan. Numbers per the pad. Capcom, Stan Lovesworth. Now reminding the crew that the perigee raise maneuver time of ignition is as expected prior to booster ignition. That time being 49 minutes, 50 seconds of mission elapsed time. Integrity, good. NEDS deploy. Copy that, Stan. Good, NEDS. Integrity, Houston. For PWD setup, just a reminder, halfway open on the secondary. Passing 11 minutes of mission elapsed time. Overhearing the conversation between Capcom Stan Love and Commander Reid Wiseman. Already passing some milestones. We have a good nozzle extension deployment system. That is confirmed complete. We also have the visors are confirmed up now past the dynamic phase of flight that is ascent. Their launch and entry suits, that provided them an extra layer of protection, now not as needed. They're going to raise those visors. And later in today's mission, they will begin to egress or get out of the suits to begin some of their initial tasks of activating some of the systems aboard in the Integrity spacecraft. Passing 12 minutes of mission elapsed time. Again, the perigee raise maneuver that's targeted near 50 minutes of mission elapsed time, 49 minutes, 50 seconds. That's what the crew is going to be working towards. The Commander Reid Wiseman pilot, Victor Glover, will focus on preparing for that milestone. In the meantime, Mission Specialists Christina Cook and Jeremy Hansen will start some of the activation of Environmental Control Life Support Systems. You may hear confirmation of their activation over the Orion to Earth communication network. Houston, C-3AUX power back in auto. Copy, C-3AUX, and we're two minutes to maneuver. All right, Stan, we copy. One second earlier for 5-1-2-6. Saws are starting to deploy. Thermal knives are firing. We concur. Thanks for the report. Read back of the reports that you just heard on the Orion to Earth network. Integrity has maneuvered tail to sun. The RL-10 nozzle on the end of the ICPS is pointed towards the sun. The solar array deployment sequence has begun. With the deployment confirmed, it will be several minutes until they are what is called in a latched position. Once they are latched and confirmed to be drawing power, they can switch the mode to ATO and continue along the mission. The teacher's hand over at the pad, that message meant the crew was provided some preliminary numbers of when to expect handovers between the tracking and data relay satellites. Currently orbiting Earth at an altitude of 545 statute miles above the Earth. They are in a near-Earth network communication system. The tracking and data relay satellites, geosynchronous satellites that are stationed about 23,000 miles above the Earth. After the Apogee Rays burn, that occurs later today, the burn itself will put them at an altitude that surpasses the range of the tracking and data relay satellites, and they will transition to the Deep Space Network today. Integrity for prop messages, we see two temperature measurements right near the line. It's a momentary message you saw earlier. We're going to suppress those. It's CM Helium Heater 2 T1 and Heater 1 T1. They're going suppressed. Integrity, thank you. We see the same. This is Mission Control Houston passing 23 minutes of mission elapsed time into the Artemis II mission. This is after a launch that began at 535 and 12 seconds Central time, 635 and 12 seconds PM Eastern time. Right now, the orientation you're seeing from our aero visualization, that translates some of the telemetry that we're getting from the spacecraft and puts it into a model, so you can follow along on some of the milestones that we are following here. The RL-10 nozzle that you see at the left end of your screen, though it is currently not firing, that nozzle is pointed towards the sun, and the solar arrays are currently deploying. From this visualization, they look fully stowed in a position. Integrity, we are happy to report that Jeremy has the O2 sensors on. Copy O2 sensors. Again, Commander Reid Wiseman and Pilot Victor Glover overseeing the deployment of the solar arrays, and we'll follow the attitude maneuver changes ahead of the first burn of the ICPS engine, the energy raise maneuver. Integrity, Houston, we see four SAWs deployed and latched, ready for ATO preferred. We're almost there in the procedure stand, and we see the same thing. Integrity, Houston, we are seeing a seven-second mis-compare between the MET on Orion and ICPS. We'd like you to read us the MET from your center status bar and for the ICPS on stack sum. And, Stan, we see an absolutely precise alignment, MET 25, 14, 15, 16, precisely aligned with ICPS MET. Copy. Thank you for that. We'll investigate a ground issue. Houston, Integrity, ATO preferred set. Copy, ATO preferred. This is Mission Control Houston, 25 minutes, 45 seconds into the flight of Artemis II. We have confirmation that all four solar array wings are deployed and latched. This is the configuration needed to switch to ATO preferred, which you did hear confirmed from Pilot Victor Glover. That mode has been switched. There's also a discussion with CAPCOM Stan Love and Commander Reid Wiseman about the alignment of the MET clocks on the Orion spacecraft and the ICPS. Commander Reid Wiseman confirmed the clocks are in sync, no issues. They're going to investigate it on the ground. We're proceeding with today's mission. 26 minutes of mission elapsed time and counting.