The maneuver began at 4:49am IST on Thursday (7:49pm EDT Wednesday) after mission controllers in Houston polled "go" for the burn. Orion's main engine delivered up to 6,000 pounds of thrust, enough to accelerate a car from 0 to 60mph in about 2.7 seconds, burning roughly 1,000 pounds of fuel while pushing a 58,000-pound spacecraft into deep space.

Artemis 2 is NASA's first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and will see four astronauts perform a lunar flyby on a 10-day mission launched on 1 April 2026. The crew - NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen - will swing around the far side of the Moon before looping back to Earth. Their closest approach is expected early next week, roughly coinciding with a solar eclipse visible from parts of Earth, adding drama to an already closely watched flight.

"With that successful TLI, the crew is feeling pretty good up here on our way to the Moon," Jeremy Hansen told mission control, thanking teams around the world "who worked to make Artemis possible" and saying they "felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn." NASA says the spacecraft has already completed several smaller engine burns to shape its orbit and will now cruise through cislunar space while engineers monitor systems and the crew tests life-support and exercise equipment, including a compact flywheel machine for rowing, squats and deadlifts despite tight mass limits.

For NASA, Artemis 2 is a proving ground: if this Moon mission delivers as planned, it paves the way for Artemis 3, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface later in the decade. After more than 50 years, the sight of a crewed spacecraft heading back towards the Moon signals not just nostalgia, but renewed confidence that deep-space exploration is once again within humanity's reach.