NASA astronauts are about to embark on a lunar journey. Humanity will return to the vicinity of the Moon for the first time in half a century.

The astronauts for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are scheduled to launch on Wednesday, kicking off a 10-day trip orbiting the Moon—also marking the first return to the region around the Moon by humans in more than half a century.

The “Orion” spacecraft that the crew will ride was built by Lockheed Martin, mounted atop the “Space Launch System” (SLS) rocket made by Boeing. It is scheduled to lift off at 6:24 p.m. local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This mission is a key rehearsal in space—an important step for the long-delayed “Space Launch System” rocket and the “Orion” spacecraft—and marks the most significant milestone in NASA’s multi-year “Artemis” Moon-landing program. The program aims to send humans to the Moon as early as 2028.

If the launch proceeds as planned, the four astronauts taking part in this mission will fly farther into space than anyone in history.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is on top of the Space Launch System rocket.

“The Artemis” series of missions will attempt to recreate—and further surpass—the achievements of the historic “Apollo” program. The latter, in the 1960s and 1970s, put Neil Armstrong and 11 other men on the Moon’s surface.

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Editor-in-chief: Ding Wenwu