Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
We're coming to you live from London.
I'm James Menendez.
Now, given that we spend almost all of our time on this programme telling you about what 's going on around the world,
it 's quite refreshing to escape planet Earth once in a while.
And that's what we're going to do today, at least for a fairly big chunk of this edition of NewsHour.
Because a little later, it 's looking likely that NASA will launch its first crewed mission
to the Moon in more than half a century.
That was the era of the Apollo missions that captured the imaginations of an entire generation and gave humans
their first glimpse of another body in space, as well as their first glimpse of Earth from space.
Well, this mission is called Artemis II, and the window for launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
opens in just over two hours' time.
Lots of people are gathered outside, and they're certainly excited.
I think that people going up to the moon is kind of like cool and stuff because when the booster comes down,
it makes a big old noise and stuff, and it 's cool.
I love space.
It's amazing.
It's the greatest unknown out there.
I mean, honestly, it's really incredible.
I'm pretty excited about it.