I’m sitting at my desk at work and the lights just went out. It wasn’t a power failure, it was just that none of us moved enough to trip the motion sensors that turn on the lights.

Sigh.

Hey, we’re going to the moon! The Artemis II mission is about an hour away from its launch window. I’ve been putzing around social media for the last 25 minutes or so and I think I just saw that the crew was loaded into the Orion Capsule. Assuming we don’t abort, they won’t leave the capsule for 10 days or so. They will fly into Earth orbit, circle the globe a couple of times, then head off to the moon. They aren’t landing (that will be Artemis III), they are just circling around once and then heading back.

This is just a test mission. It’s basically the same mission as Artemis I. The main difference is episode I had manikins for crew while episode II has humans. Four of them. Three Americans and a Canadian.

The launch window opens at 6:24pm Eastern time. It is currently 5:32pm Eastern time. The weather forecast is mostly sunny and warm. Things are looking good right now, but there is still plenty of time for issues to pop up.

Fingers crossed they launch tonight, circle the moon, and come home safely.