The conversation took place amid the flight readiness review for the Artemis 2 mission, which is currently set to launch no earlier than April 1, 2026, pending work being completed in the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander will deploy first and is designated as the primary payload and ispace’s Resilience lander will follow about 30 minutes after. Liftoff from pad 39A happened at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 UTC).

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon, and two other ridealong payloads on a single Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in 2024.