Kid Roasts CNN at Artemis II Launch
Someone at the Kennedy Space Center had a perfect line. And CNN got it on camera.
Artemis II left the pad Wednesday evening. It’s a roughly 10-day crewed flight that will loop around the Moon. It’s the first time humans have headed back to lunar orbit since 1972.
CNN asked the boy, “Why do you want to be here? Why do you love space? Why do you love being a part of history?”
He didn’t hold back. “We’re going back to the freakin’ moon, that’s why!”
WATCH:
The launch went off after a brief delay. NASA’s SLS rocket, with the Orion spacecraft on top, lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at 6:35 p.m. EDT. Onboard were NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The rocket is massive. It weighed about 5.75 million pounds at liftoff. The twin solid rocket boosters provided over 75% of the initial thrust. With four RS-25 engines firing, the stack generated roughly 8.8 million pounds of force as it climbed away from the pad.
Ascent milestones happened fast. Umbilicals pulled away and retracted. The vehicle went through max Q and then shed its solid rocket boosters a couple minutes later. The launch abort system jettisoned, and the core stage shut down roughly eight minutes after liftoff.
The mission will test systems and hardware for future Artemis flights. It’s a proving ground for returning to the lunar surface, expanding science there, and building toward deeper missions to Mars.
The kid’s line captured the mood. People laughed. The clip is already spreading online. For many fans at the Cape, this launch felt like a long-awaited, blunt answer to the question of why this matters.