What's the status of the Artemis II rocket?

10, 9, 8, 7-- RS-25 engines. Lift. 4, 3, 2, 1. Booster ignition and liftoff. The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins.

This launch has been years in the making and essentially acts as a test flight to lay the groundwork for a future moon landing in 2028. Right now, the solar array wings are open, and once those are latched, they can start drawing solar power. These are your crew members, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Jeremy is the lone Canadian on board. They will travel 252,000 miles from Earth, farther than any other humans in history. They will also be the first people ever to lay their eyes on certain areas of the far side of the moon. You're looking at NASA mission control in Houston. This launch was supposed to happen in early February, but it was delayed a few times for different reasons. Remember, this is hard stuff, including a hydrogen leak and problems with the pressurization system. But at this hour, everything is going smoothly. The astronauts will be on a nine-day journey before arriving back on Earth. Derrick Pitts joins us now. He is the chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute. So, Derrick, first of all, before we get into what is happening now, I saw Peggy Whitson on air with Tony getting emotional. I think she really encapsulated what I was feeling, what my producer Sandra was feeling. There's just something so emotional. I saw grown men on the ground in Florida wiping away tears. What is it about this that touches at our heartstrings and represents the best of humanity? Well, I think what you're seeing is people's reaction to a really challenging, challenging endeavor being met. And we're also thinking about, as we see this, what it's like for these astronauts to be such intrepid explorers. And I think we're deeply appreciative to them for their willingness to do this. And I think at the same time, the one other thing we think is that it is so exciting. It's so exciting that it really does pull your emotions right up to the surface. So what is happening now? What is the crew doing? Well, right now, what the crew is doing is configuring that spacecraft, the Orion capsule, for the rest of the mission. They took the ride up to space for about 8 and 1/2 minutes or so, and now what they've done is they've set out the solar panels. They're changing their power systems over to batteries to the solar panels that they have on board so that they can continue the rest of the mission, and they're really getting everything oriented for what's coming up next. You have to remember that they have a very long list of things that they have to do to accomplish over the next several hours. They're going to alter their orbit. They're going to change their orbit just slightly by circularizing it a little bit and increasing the orbital altitudes over the next day. And they're also going to take some time to sort of learn how to steer the Orion spacecraft by doing something they call proximity operations, in which what they do is they pretend to dock with the ICPS, which is the interface that we used that was used to boost them up to their current altitude. So they're going to detach from that, turn around, and they'll sort of dance around it and perform different docking maneuvers. So this means that they're very, very busy sort of clearing out the interior of the capsule that they're in so that they have room to work and then getting about configuring the spacecraft to do all those other things.

So they are now 29 minutes into mission elapsed time. Are they officially in the second orbit? Because it's my understanding the first orbit was very fast. The second orbit of the Earth is like 24 hours. Yeah, so they first got up to Earth orbit, and they're like finishing off that first part of their if you would call it Earth orbit insertion, if you will, and now they're on to their first full orbit. You can think of it as the first full orbit. And so they'll continue in orbit around Earth for about a day as they take care of all these other things that they have to do about the proximity operations and jettisoning the ICPS portion of the spacecraft and then getting themselves turned around and headed off toward the moon. So that's coming up tomorrow, but it's a busy day for them still today. In fact, their day today is about 17 hours long, but they've been preparing for this for years. So they are really ready and excited to get on with the business of heading out to the moon.

And they get two four-hour naps, right? All right, Derrick Pitts, we appreciate you starting us off. We are going to be talking more in depth about the entirety of the mission, but we appreciate you helping us understand what is happening right now. Let's now go to CBS News correspondent Cristian Benavides from Kennedy Space Center. Cristian, Tony, he was 3 miles away. Rob, he was 8 miles away, and even both of them described it like an earthquake. You're much closer. Are you even a mile away? Lindsey, we're about 2 to 3 miles away from the launch pad. And I mean, look, I was here for the Artemis I mission as well, and that was a night launch. So we saw as night turned into day, and we felt the ground shake. This was a little different because daylight is out, but we felt the ground shake. And I mean, we could see it. It's sort of interesting because you see the launch, but it takes just a few moments before the sound wave gets to you, and then you feel everything shaking. We're on the rooftop of the CBS building here at the Kennedy Space Center. So it was just quite a remarkable, remarkable moment, and just to watch us enter this new chapter of space exploration and what it means for the generations to come is just quite incredible. Returning to the moon is something 50 years in the making. I mean, it's just remarkable to have been able to be here and just witness that and for all of us-- I mean, happening on America's 250th birthday, and it's just quite remarkable.

You've also been talking to people who have traveled to see this. What did they tell you? Yeah, people who traveled from all over. I spoke to a woman who came from across the pond from the UK, and she said that she was excited to watch. People came from all over from Utah. I'm sure from every state in the nation, but we spoke to folks that came here, drove over, flew over, at both the Kennedy Space Center visitor center and also at different locations here. At a T-shirt shop, people were just buying souvenirs. There's just this excitement that we're entering this new era of space exploration because remember, this lunar flyby is just the beginning of what is going to come next on Artemis IV when we actually put feet on the moon and eventually build this moon base that can serve as a launch pad to further space exploration-- potentially in years to come, getting to Mars. I mean, it's just truly remarkable to watch this and to have it be a unifying moment among all Americans. It's just really remarkable.

Well said. Cristian Benavides, thank you so much. Let's now go to CBS News Senior Transportation Correspondent Kris Van Cleave from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I imagine there are thermoses full of Diet Coke, coffee, whatever have you. Explain to us their role in this. Well, our newsroom is certainly busy here at the Johnson Space Center but nothing like master control. Although if you look into master control, it's going to look like the most orderly office you've ever seen. Everybody very calmly going through all the checklists, making sure everything is working like it should and the mission is staying on track. And that can be little things like shortly after they got up into space, it looked like there was a clock mismatch between two of the timers that they need to sync up to make sure that engines fire on time. They did some quick troubleshooting, checked with the crew on board Orion. Everything worked out. They moved on to the next thing on the list. So throughout this mission and particularly right now, every position at the master control, each of the units, if you will, that go into this space launch, they are going through their checklist. They are making sure that everything is moving as they should and that they're staying on schedule. They have timed this mission down almost to the minute. So they are watching the seconds tick by, making sure they stay on track so that they hit their benchmarks and this goes as smoothly as possible.

And you got a chance to see a simulation capsule for Orion. I've heard it described as two minivans. What should we know about it? Yeah, it's like 330 cubic feet. It is like being in two minivans. This is the training capsule. So it's an exact replica of what they're sitting in right now that they've been using to train in, and it's cozy. I'll tell you that. You've got four people that are going to be very close friends or never speak again after this mission, I suspect, based on how close they'll be spending together. Two of the chairs fold up and get out of the way so there's a little bit more room. But the chairs that we're sitting in on the screen there, the mission commander and the pilot chairs, those are going to stay in place, as they have duties throughout the launch. And right now, they're pretty busy. They are monitoring everything that's going on, making sure the capsule is working right and responding. And at some point here in the next day or so, if all goes to plan, they're going to get an opportunity to hand fly the Orion capsule, something that's never happened before. Remember, people have never been inside this capsule in space before, so everything that happens from here is a first. I've got to ask you, you're our transportation guy. Did you geek out? A little bit. Yeah. I mean, listen, it is always fun when you get to fly a simulator, and this is a simulator unlike any other because it's a spacecraft. It's the only spacecraft that anyone is flying right now, certainly today. So it was very cool to be in it. It was also, I think, really good perspective to see just how small that capsule actually is, and you think about having to live and work in there, everything from, How do you eat? How do you sleep? How do you use the bathroom? and how do you do that all with four people in what amounts to two minivans next to each other is pretty remarkable. Thank you for the 21 packages, Kris Van Cleave. I think that's a new CBS record or possible network record. Thank you. Lindsey, I hope you run them all, all 21. All of them. All of them. All of them. All right, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.