NASA launches first crewed lunar mission in half a century

https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-launches-first-crewed-lunar-mission-half-century-2026-04-01/

48 Comments

  1. anachronistic_circus on

    This one won’t land on the moon just yet. But it will set the record for the farthest manned distance from earth.

  2. Duke0fWellington on

    I’m shocked at how amazing I found that. I’ve seen rockets launch before. This was something else. Something I’ve dreamed about since I was a child.

    Just incredible.

  3. This should be higher up the news, it’s literally a lifetime moment to watch/share/marvel about how cool humans can be.

  4. Thankfully, we still have things to dream about in this recent flow of bad news

    Wishing a safe journey to the crew 🫶

  5. Really cool. If all continues to go well I hope we see some new moon pics next week. Got to travel 1/4 million miles first!

  6. My dad watched Apollo missions growing up with his father. I watched Shuttle launches growing up with my father. Feels surreal that I just watched the next generation with my son.

    Godspeed Artemis. Never stop pushing the envelope of science and exploration forward.

  7. largelawattorney on

    Was strangely emotional watching that. Space exploration will always be amazing to me.

  8. ViciousNakedMoleRat on

    I’m super happy that everything went as planned so far and I wish the crew success in their entire mission.

    The broadcast was shockingly bad, though. Bad tracking, bad cuts, just a few seconds of onboard footage, no visible data for most of the initial flight, extremely laggy animations…

    For such a big event, I expected a lot more.

  9. Signal_Quarter_74 on

    I can’t really explain how excited I am. Humans are literally going further than ever before! Since our beginning we have dreamed about going to the moon, today we once again fulfill that dream

  10. Can’t wait for the photos that will come from this. Absolutely getting them printed and put on our walls!

  11. ImaLichBitch on

    This went so underreported before launch it feels like a Dr House skit.

    “Hey Wilson, wanna watch me slingshot 4 people around the Moon?”

    “Sure… Wait, you’re serious?”

  12. caligaris_cabinet on

    Watched it with my two year old. He was so enamored with the launch he made me watch various rocket launches on YouTube after. His favorite was the movie Apollo 13 launch. Hope to encourage this interest in space for a long time

  13. I watched it was my daughter and you know what? 2 minutes before launch our electricity went off for a second, including my router which needs more than 2 minutes to be online again….
    We watched it on my mobile instead lol man what the fuck over 50 years and 2 minutes before launch the fucking electricity goes off… I still can’t fathom it.

    Either way a historic day for sure. Hope to see them return safely and successfully.

  14. Capital-Stay4423 on

    I love space and everything to do with it, but is there a further reason for this mission? Just to get near the moon and back, are they testing new rocket technology or something?

  15. 55Throwaway1 on

    I really live for shit like this man.

    In a world full of so much negativity, moments like this only stand out brighter.

    I wouldn’t say I pay much attention to the world of science, but genuinely, I felt like I was about to tear up watching that live.

    Humans can do incredible things when we’re not fighting each other.

  16. chocolatepinetree on

    Very cool! I love seeing Canadian/US collaboration – after such a rough year, it’s nice to have something normal like this.

    So looks like it’ll take 2 days to get to the moon and then they’ll fly around it for another few days and take pictures and observe etc. I didn’t see anything clear on what they’re looking for? I know it is a step towards them landing on the moon again in another few years, but I’m curious about what this mission is actually about? I did read the article but it was a little vague on that part.

  17. FantasticPangolin839 on

    Finally! Some good news, the kind of news to remind us that we are all passengers on this tiny blue spacecraft we call Earth.

  18. The Vietnam War was raging when the American astronauts landed on the moon in 1969. So let’s not pretend the backdrop was much different back then. There’s always bad stuff happening. Just focus on the good we as humans can do, and this incredible achievement. WELL DONE NASA! 🇺🇸

  19. Local_Cloud2872 on

    You know when you’re seeing something or doing something and you just know intuitively that you’re forming a core memory? That you’re actively in the moment experiencing something that you will always look back on like “hey remember that time?” Because it’s a historic event. We live in south Florida, my whole family and I not only watched it all together, we went outside and got to see the actual rocket in the sky! It was very far away but we saw it and recorded it! So cool to have experienced that moment in history.

  20. muffinmunncher on

    and yet i didn’t see this in my news notifcations?? I’m not even american but this is so cool!!

  21. Fluid-Pain554 on

    Being an aerospace engineer, learning about SLS and NASA’s ambitions of returning to the moon were a huge part of my decision to pursue this field. I traveled down to Cape Canaveral to watch the first ever flight of Orion for EFT 1 back in December of 2014 just prior to beginning my undergraduate studies. Fast forward to 2019 and I had the honor of playing the smallest of roles in this program as an intern working on simulations that’d be used for tuning flight software for this rocket, and in the years since I have had the privilege of knowing many people who contributed far more to this endeavor. This launch took the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of people to pull off and it is genuinely surreal to see it finally happen.

  22. Possible_Shoulder_50 on

    I watched the launch. Can a flat earther explain to me how they didn’t hit the firmament and explode? Thanks 🤙🏼

  23. Damn I missed the live footage, gonna watch it now, this is HISTORY moment of our lifetime. I’m excited

  24. I was 4 in 1969. Remembered Armstrong walking in the Moon. My Dad was shaking me to stay awake. Telling me I would remember this my entire life. I DID REMEMBER ! I’m calling my Dad tonight and mentioning it.

  25. I was at a watch party today in Houston. I Met a very nice, older gentleman who was wearing an “option is not a failure” lanyard.
    93 years young. I could not let him leave without me asking if he worked on Apollo missions and it turns out he did. He asked me if I had time to talk so we chatted in the lobby about his time working with the Apollo missions and his role with training Buzz and Neil. It’s a conversation I will never forget and I hope I see him at the next launch party 🚀

  26. Seamonkey_Boxkicker on

    How am I only now just learning of this?

    Oh right. America has been committing all sorts of human rights violations in the past year.

  27. A_carbon_based_biped on

    I was waiting for it to be a ginormous April Fools joke… happy it wasn’t.

  28. Original-Aardvark-48 on

    I don’t know if maybe this has a lot to say about me or the world we live in, but I really expected it to blow up . And when It didn’t, I felt like wow this is really dope like all these people came together to make this machine that will make a round-trip to the stars like, how many years did it take to actually do this? And how many sleepless nights did people have to work to make sure everyone on board will be safe and the physical and mental training the astronauts had to go through. it will be always interesting

  29. I listened to it on the radio with my kids… they failed to grasp the significance. But my 80 year old dad surely did not.

  30. Think-Departure-5054 on

    Cried watching this with my newborn and 4 year old daughters. My 4 year old said “I thought only boys could be astronauts?” I feel like this was a really important event for her to witness. She then spent the rest of the night preparing her space mission and asking to see videos from the ISS 🥲

  31. One1moretyme on

    if you download the NASA app, you can watch all live coverage of the whole mission

  32. Tychontehdwarf on

    I hope this gets people interested in space again. One of life’s biggest disappointment was the disarming of the Space Race.