KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Launching to the Moon is an all-day undertaking, something the four astronauts waiting to climb aboard NASA's Artemis II rocket know well.
"It is actually a very long day," said Victor Glover, the pilot on Artemis II. "We wake up about eight hours before launch, and there's a pretty tight schedule of things to get out there."
Glover and his three crewmates have their schedules planned to the minute throughout the nine-day Artemis II mission. If all goes according to plan, their mission will carry them more than a quarter-million miles from Earth, farther from home than anyone has ventured in human history. After looping behind the Moon, the astronauts and their Orion capsule will fall back to Earth at some 25,000 mph (40,000 km/hr), setting another record for the fastest that humans have ever traveled.