The Artemis II astronauts blasted out of Earth’s orbit Thursday evening and on to the next phase of their mission — a four-day journey toward the moon.
The Orion spacecraft burned its engine for six minutes, a pivotal move that put astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen on a trajectory that humans haven’t traveled in more than a half-century. Going beyond Earth’s orbit comes with a host of risks, such as the sheer distance from home if anything goes awry, and the health effects of exposure to deep-space radiation from solar activity or cosmic rays once the astronauts are beyond the protection of Earth’s magnetic field.
