COMING UP: in a few hours at 23:43 UTC, a final burn will send the crew on their way to the Moon. This will be performed by our European Service Module's main engine.

NASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off on Wednesday. Now brace yourselves for exciting high-resolution 4K footage live-streamed of the surface of the moon thanks to NASA's laser-based O2O system. The cutting-edge Orion Artemis II Optical Communications system (O2O) will be used to beam 4K moon footage at up to 260 Mbps. We should also be treated to never-before-seen views of “the far side of the Moon, using Nikon digital cameras,” reports The BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

ARTEMIS II IS GO FOR TRANS-LUNAR INJECTION! Mission Control Houston just confirmed to Orion Integrity, following a meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT).

Time-lapse of the successful ICPS-Orion proximity test!

Just 1,500 feet (457 m) from the Artemis II launch, we deployed our special high-resolution, slow-motion camera to record the blast-off in jaw-dropping detail at 2,000 frames per second. Find out how we did it: on.natgeo.com/0BXGmi

Artemis II launch in VERY slow motion

Artemis II launch from the tower in slow motion. ‍Graded and re-interpolated by me, shot by NASA!

“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”

Mission specialists like Christina H Koch train for all roles so they can jump in wherever they’re needed. Sometimes that means fixing vital machinery, like the spacecraft toilet.

In this image, also taken from the Orion capsule, we see the divide between night and day, known as the terminator, cutting across Earth. Whether awake or dreaming, we're all here on this planet together.

Artemis II update: our European Service Module's main engine performed the translunar injection so precisely that flight controllers in Houston decided to cancel the first of three outbound trajectory correction burns on the way to the Moon🥳

Working up an appetite!

As Victor Glover gets in his exercise for the day, Jeremy R. Hansen is preparing the crew's midday meal.

You've seen his visualizations. Now, meet the man who knows the far side of the Moon like the back of his hand.

Ernie Wright maps the Moon, which comes in handy when training NASA Artemis astronauts to see parts of the lunar surface humans have never laid eyes on before.

Artemis II Science Officer, reporting for duty. 🚀

There’s a new “SCIENCE” seat in the main NASA Artemis flight control room. Yesterday, Kelsey Young of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center became the first person to step into this role during an Artemis mission.

The Science Officer represents a whole community. Just one floor away, in a backroom at Mission Control, the Artemis II Lunar Science Team is hard at work. They have been preparing for this moment – and getting astronauts ready for Moon observing missions – for years.

They’ve led training expeditions to Earth's most Moon-like places, custom-built lunar geology classes, worked out the fine points of photographing the Moon from space, and spent countless hours in mission simulations.

Now, together with the crew and flight controllers, they’re not just helping Artemis II reach its full science potential—they’re laying a strong foundation for future missions.

Meet the Artemis II Science Officers: go.nasa.gov/4bRILw9