Artemis astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are on board. They’ll hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn and then come

NASA's Artemis II will send four astronauts to circle the moon without landing on it. The mission will set the stage for a human moon landing in 2028.

After waiting above the Earth for almost a day, the NASA Orion spacecraft is expected to fire its engines soon and shoot away from the planet.

A decision will be made Thursday about whether it is safe for the crew to leave low Earth orbit and begin the more dangerous journey toward the moon.

The Artemis II crew will orbit the Earth for about 24 hours to inspect the Orion capsule before a decision is made to proceed toward the moon. CBS News' Cristian Benavides reports, and Les Johnson, a former chief technologist for NASA,

The Artemis II astronauts launched but are still in Earth orbit. They will soon begin their journey toward the moon.

Under a mission scheduled to launch Wednesday evening, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are set to trace a figure-eight around the moon aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft — an endeavor known as Artemis II — making them the first people to travel this far since the Apollo missions of the 1970s.

The Artemis 2 astronauts are on their way to the moon, and you can track them every step of the way. NASA's Artemis 2 mission launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule.