The final stretch before lift-off.

Since 1972, no human being has orbited or set foot on the moon. And now, after much to-and-fro, it seems like the time has come to return to our natural satellite.

The four Artemis II astronauts arrived in Florida today (27), in the final phase of preparations for the historic mission.

Reuters reported:

"NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch from Kennedy Space Center as soon as April 1 aboard NASA's towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, riding inside an Orion crew capsule built to carry humans into deep space. The roughly 10-day mission will ?send the crew on a high-speed loop around the Moon and back."

"Artemis II will be ?the first crewed mission of NASA's multi-billion-dollar Artemis program. While it will not attempt a moon landing, it will send astronauts farther from ?Earth than any previous human spaceflight, testing the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems, navigation, communications, and heat shield performance."