Cal Poly graduate and NASA astronaut Victor Glover is on his way to making history with the rest of the crew of the Artemis II on the first manned mission to the moon since 1972.

A rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:35 p.m. PDT on Wednesday in a textbook clean launch with few-to-no anomalies noted in the lead up to liftoff.

Glover joined fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day journey around the moon.

Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission under the Artemis program, which “will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars,” the agency’s website said.

The mission will set several spaceflight records, including Glover becoming the first person of color and Koch becoming the first woman to travel to the moon’s proximity.

The Artemis II mission will not include a lunar landing, though that is planned for future Artemis missions. Now the spaceship will begin its multi-day journey toward the moon.

Watch the launch and live mission coverage on NASA’s YouTube channel.