CAPE CANAVERAL — Following a series of triumphant engine burns and $93 billion in cumulative taxpayer investment, NASA confirmed Thursday that the Artemis II mission is officially on track to reach the exact same celestial body humanity conquered during the Nixon administration.

The Space Launch System (SLS), described by officials as the most powerful rocket ever built to do something we already did with slide rules and black-and-white television, successfully propelled four astronauts out of Earth’s orbit. The crew—Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—will spend the next several days in a spacecraft the size of a minibus, marveling at the fact that they are the first humans in 54 years to see the far side of the Moon in person rather than on a high-definition screen.

"This is a historic moment for the Record," said a spokesperson for the Ministry’s Archives Section, speaking from a mission control center that cost more than the original Apollo program’s entire lunar module. "By 2026, we have finally regained the technology required to reach the neighborhood we moved out of in 1972. It is a testament to human perseverance that we can spend five decades and tens of billions of dollars to achieve a 0% net gain in distance traveled."

Internal reports suggest that the 'Translunar Injection' burn lasted five minutes and 50 seconds, a critical window during which the agency’s credibility was balanced against the risk of the Orion capsule becoming the world’s most expensive piece of orbital debris. The successful burn ensures that the astronauts will orbit the Moon without landing on it—a strategic decision that allows NASA to claim a win while deferring the infinitely more expensive task of actually touching the ground until a future budget cycle.

"We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible to repeat," said one senior official who requested anonymity to avoid discussing the $4.1 billion per-launch price tag. "In the 1960s, we went to the Moon because it was hard. In the 2020s, we are going to the Moon because we have already paid the contractors and we need to justify the 2027 fiscal request."

At press time, the crew was reportedly testing the Orion’s life support systems, which are designed to keep humans alive for six days in the event of a total failure—roughly the same amount of time it took for the 1972 crew to get bored of the Moon and come home.