NASA is scheduled to begin launching its mission to the moon Artemis 1 off the launch pad on Friday morning (July 1) and you will be able to watch the slow action live.
The pile of Artemis 1 – a Space launch system The rocket (SLS), headed by an Orion crew capsule, is expected to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Pad 39B in Florida at midnight EDT (0400 GMT) on Friday. The duo will head to KSC’s cavernous Vehicle Mounting Building (VAB), making the 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) journey in about 10 hours aboard NASA’s huge. vehicle on track-conveyor 2.
You can watch at least some parts of the live rollback here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA. The agency will provide webcast coverage (opens in a new tab) “of the rocket coming out of the launch pad and reaching VAB,” NASA officials wrote in a recent update (opens in a new tab).
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission is explained in the photos
Artemis 1 has recently completed its “wet clothing test,” a crucial series of tests and simulations designed to help determine a vehicle’s readiness for flight. This wet suit success was hard to come by; the Artemis 1 team first attempted to reach the milestone in early April, but was frustrated by several technical issues, including a blocked valve. Team members ended up returning the battery to the VAB for repair on April 25, and then sent it to the blog for another attempt earlier this month.
The last attempt did not go perfectly well: a hydrogen leak was discovered during fuel supply operations, but NASA officials he considered it good enough to begin preparing Artemis 1 for takeoff.
Artemis 1 will send an unmanned Orion on a voyage of about a month the moon. Apparently, the mission team is scheduled to take off in late August or early September, but no official target date will be set until SLS and Orion have been fully inspected at the VAB.
As its name suggests, Artemis 1 is NASA’s first mission Artemis programwhich aims to establish a sustainable human presence on and around the Moon by the end of the 2020s. If all goes well with Artemis 1, Artemis 2 will send a crew Orion around the Moon in 2024, and Artemis 3 will place the astronauts near the lunar south pole about two years later.
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