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NASA’s Artemis II mission lifted off April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon aboard the Orion capsule. This marks the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Real-Time Tracking for the Public

Unlike the Apollo era, when updates trickled through TV broadcasts and newspapers, Artemis II offers real-time tracking via NASA’s Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW). “Using AROW, anyone with internet access can monitor Orion’s location, distance from Earth and the moon, mission duration, and more,” NASA officials said.

AROW streams sensor data from Orion to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, giving continuous updates from roughly one minute after liftoff through Orion’s reentry to Earth. The platform also provides background on the moon and historic Apollo landing sites. Users can access the tracker via NASA’s website or app, which features an augmented-reality mode allowing people to visualize Orion’s location relative to their own position on Earth.

The Crew and Historic Milestones

The Artemis II crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. Glover will become the first African-American to venture beyond LEO, while Koch and Hansen will be the first woman and first non-American, respectively, to travel that far into space.

Artemis II is primarily a test flight to validate Orion’s deep-space capabilities, a critical step in NASA’s Artemis program aimed at establishing a sustainable human presence on and around the moon in the coming years.