PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – NASA’s Artemis II successfully blasted off Wednesday afternoon — capturing the attention of space enthusiasts in Portland.
“There’s a lot of tremendous engineering, science and planning that goes into human exploration,” said Jim Todd, OMSI space science education director.
Todd closely followed the launch all afternoon, with the 32-story Space Launch System rocket lifting off at 3:35 p.m. Pacific Time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission marks the first manned trip to the moon in 53 years.
Artemis astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are on board. The Americans and one Canadian will hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn and then come straight back for a Pacific splashdown.
“There’s a lot of components with this excitement,” Todd said. “We have people of color for the first time going to the moon. We have a woman astronaut going to the moon, and it’s a whole new vehicle system that is going to the moon.”
If all goes as planned, the astronauts will travel farther from Earth than any humans in history.
Todd is very excited for the mission. He grew up with NASA’s space program and said it is one of the reasons why he works at the science museum.
“It’s the human exploration part of it,” he said. “To learn more about our surroundings. To learn what’s beyond planet Earth … People need something like this so we can look forward to something new and learn something in science and space. And that’s the beauty of it.”
According to NASA, which has grand plans for a permanent moon base, the 10-day test flight is a key step toward returning to the moon’s surface and one day — reaching Mars. The space program is aiming for a moon landing near the lunar south pole in 2028.
Todd told FOX 12 the mission will take older generations back to Apollo 10 and hopefully, ignite a passion for space in young Oregonians.
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