[00:00] Elise Moreau: From Neural Newscast, I'm Elise Moreau.
[00:04] Elise Moreau: We begin with a developing story out of Florida.
[00:07] Evelyn Hartwell: And I'm Evelyn Hartwell.
[00:10] Evelyn Hartwell: Today, April 1, 2026, NASA's Space Launch System successfully returned humans to the path of the Moon.
[00:20] Evelyn Hartwell: At 6.35 p.m. Eastern Time, the Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center,
[00:28] Evelyn Hartwell: marking the first crewed lunar flight since 1972.
[00:33] Elise Moreau: The liftoff followed several brief technical hurdles that the launch team managed throughout the afternoon.
[00:41] Elise Moreau: Engineers spent hours troubleshooting a battery temperature reading in the launch abort system,
[00:48] Elise Moreau: NASA eventually cleared the issue as a sensor instrumentation error rather than a hardware failure.
[00:56] Evelyn Hartwell: There was also a concern regarding the flight termination system on the Eastern Range.
[01:03] Evelyn Hartwell: However, those constraints were resolved in time for the two-hour window.
[01:08] Evelyn Hartwell: Once the countdown hit zero, the SLS generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust,
[01:16] Evelyn Hartwell: sending the Orion capsule, Integrity, into the Florida sky.
[01:22] Elise Moreau: The trajectory of this mission is specifically designed to push the boundaries of distance,
[01:29] Elise Moreau: Evelyn.
[01:30] Elise Moreau: On day six of the 10-day mission, the crew will reach more than 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the moon.
[01:38] Elise Moreau: That puts them nearly 253,000 miles from Earth, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13.
[01:48] Evelyn Hartwell: The four-person crew is historic in its composition.
[01:52] Evelyn Hartwell: Commander Reed Wiseman is joined by pilot Victor Glover, who becomes the first person of color on a lunar mission,
[02:00] Evelyn Hartwell: and mission specialist Christina Koch, the first woman.
[02:04] Evelyn Hartwell: Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency is the first non-American to leave lower Earth orbit.
[02:14] Elise Moreau: During their pre-flight briefings, the astronauts were clear that while they recognized these milestones,
[02:20] Elise Moreau: the primary goal is a successful test of the Orion's life support and communication hardware.
[02:26] Elise Moreau: They will be living in a capsule with an interior volume similar to a small camper van for the duration of this 685,000-mile journey.
[02:35] Evelyn Hartwell: This data is critical for the long-term vision of NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman.
[02:42] Evelyn Hartwell: The agency is targeting a $20 billion moon base by the end of the decade.
[02:46] Evelyn Hartwell: Artemis II is the foundation for that work, with the crew set to photograph lunar south pole regions to identify future landing sites.
[02:55] Elise Moreau: We will continue to track the integrity capsule as it makes its way toward the lunar environment.
[03:01] Elise Moreau: From Neural Newscast, I'm Elise Moreau.
[03:03] Evelyn Hartwell: And I'm Evelyn Hartwell.
[03:06] Evelyn Hartwell: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
[03:12] Evelyn Hartwell: View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.