NASA readies Artemis mission into orbit around moon. Here’s what to know.

Humanity could soon return to the moon’s environs for the first time in half a century.

Under a mission scheduled to launch Wednesday evening, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are set to trace a figure-eight around the moon aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft — an endeavor known as Artemis II — making them the first people to travel this far since the Apollo missions of the 1970s.