At 10:23 a.m. EDT (1423 GMT) today (Aug. 27), the countdown clock began ticking down to the planned launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission.
The last Apollo mission took place on December 19, 1972, and in the interim, NASA has worked to establish a program that promises to land humans on unexplored lunar regions and eventually on the surface of Mars — and it all begins with Artemis.
The Artemis 1 mission will not carry astronauts nor will it land on the moon, yet it is critical to demonstrate that NASA’s monster rocket and deep space capsule can deliver on their promised abilities. Artemis I has been delayed for years, with the program running billions over budget, reports Space.com.
The launch window is set for between 8:33 a.m. and 10:33 a.m. ET on August 29 from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with backup launch windows on September 2 and September 5.
Launch Pad 39B was once the home of the Saturn V rocket, which carried the Apollo missions to the moon and lifted off with 7.6 million pounds of thrust. The SLS rocket will punch off the pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust.
If all goes well and the launch does take place on schedule, what follows is a 42-day mission. During the journey, the Orion spacecraft will travel 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond the moon — 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers) farther than the record set during Apollo 13. This path mimics the journey that the Artemis II crew will take in 2024, according to CNN.
The distance Artemis 1 travels will be the farthest that any spacecraft built for humans has flown, according to NASA officials.
One of the primary objectives of the mission is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.
On its return to the Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand a speed of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).
If this mission succeeds, NASA will follow it up with Artemis 2, a crewed trip around the moon in 2024, which will then lead to the Artemis 3 crewed lunar landing a year later. The ultimate goal, NASA has said, is to fly yearly missions to the moon after Artemis 3, stage crewed landings from a Gateway space station in lunar orbit, and then aim for crewed flights to Mars.
