For the first time in 50 years, NASA plans to launch on Monday the first rocket that can carry humans there from the Moon.
The giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Cape Canaveral complex in Florida at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) atop an unmanned Orion spacecraft that is designed to carry up to six astronauts to the Moon and beyond.
The 1.3m-mile Artemis I test mission, which lasts 42 days, aims to take the Orion rover 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the Moon, leaving the same facility lation that organized the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago.
NASA’s space shuttle program in the interim launched manned Earth-orbiting missions into relatively close outer space before it was discontinued in 2011. US private space companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and SpaceX’s ‘Elon Musk has performed similar missions in the shuttle program. But Artemis I’s job is to start reporting to NASA whether the moon can act as a springboard to send astronauts to Mars, which would really bring the stuff of science fiction to life.
US taxpayers are expected to contribute $93 billion to fund the Artemis program. But in the days leading up to Monday’s launch, NASA administrators insisted that Americans would find the cost justified.
“This is now the Artemis generation,” NASA administrator and former space shuttle astronaut Bill Nelson said recently. “We were in the Apollo generation. This is a new generation. This is a new kind of astronaut.”
For Monday’s debut, the only “crew members” aboard Orion are mannequins intended to allow Nasa to assess its next-generation spacesuits and radiation levels, as well as a Snoopy soft toy intended for il ·illustrate zero gravity floating around the capsule.