The Artemis II mission rumbled, roared, and rocketed into the sky at dusk on Wednesday, beginning a journey around the moon and back. Four astronauts are aboard for the first human rendezvous with the moon since the last Apollo spaceflight in 1972.
"We have a beautiful moonrise," mission commander Reid Wiseman said shortly after liftoff. "We're headed right at it."
The crew will travel more than 250,000 miles from Earth — farther than any other human beings in history.
Our family watched the Artemis launch through glossy eyes. To see that rocket soar into the spring sky, bearing human beings into outer space, reminded us: while we see scenes every day of rockets that deliver destruction and death across the globe, human minds can also send rockets into the heavens on missions of discovery.
The launch made us think of all the mechanics, physicists, doctors, designers, engineers, technicians, and safety experts, working for federal agencies, companies, and universities, and everyone who taught them and encouraged their dreams, so they could build the rocket and capsule that carried Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen safely into space.
I have spoken with many astronauts over the years. They're often pilots and scientists, who are moved to poetics to tell us how beholding earth from outer space can shake the human soul, and make us wonder where we fit in the universe.
The 24 astronauts who have been to the moon have seen our blue earth look "tiny, tiny against a black velvet background" of space, as Michael Collins, who flew on the Apollo 11 mission, described it to us in 2019.
Apollo 14 pilot Ed Mitchell saw earth from the moon's orbit as "a sparkling blue and white jewel, a delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery."
"The fact that just from the distance of the moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb," marveled Jim Lovell, who orbited the moon on the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions, "... but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy living here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself."
To watch Artemis soar into the skies this week was to get a glimpse of the hopes of humanity ascending, too.
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