Artemis II just reached a point of no return. Next stop: The moon.

Artemis II has officially left Earth's neighborhood, with the Orion spacecraft now on a three-day leg of the deep space journey toward the moon.

After NASA polled "go" on translunar injection — or TLI, the key engine firing — flight controllers commanded the maneuver just before 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 2, less than 24 hours after the historic mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

For the U.S. space agency, this moment is the real point of no return in a carefully orchestrated test flight.