Unless technical issues and Florida weather, Artemis 1 will be launched after midnight Wednesday for a 15-day, 2.09 million km journey
Orion spacecraft at the top of the mobile launcher at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida
Fifty years ago this month, NASA mission managers finally approved humanity’s recent lunar journey. Few people realized at the time that it would take more than half a century before NASA was ready to return to the moon again. Eugene Cernan, then commander of Apollo 17, believed that astronauts would reappear "soon after."
At 1:04 a.m. ET Wednesday (6:04 a.m. GMT), Artemis 1, the most powerful rocket ship in history, will try to close the gap for fifty years, despite technical issues and uncertain weather in Florida.
Orion capsule will not be used during the 25-day, 2.09 million kilometers round-trip journey of the moon, but the success of the test mission will pave the way for manned landing work within four years. Artemis 3 is currently scheduled for 2025, but may be backwards a year, and it will add a female name to only 12 names in history – all men from Apollo flights between 1969 and 1972 – they are classified as Moon Walkers.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: "We will return to the moon in 50 years, stay, learn to work, create, develop new technologies, new systems and new spacecraft to travel to Mars."
Space Agency is looking for conditions to finally prepare for Wednesday's launch after a series of delays in the summer and early fall. Attempts in August and September were cancelled after engineers discovered engine cooling issues and then unrelated fuel leaks could not be fixed.
Hopes of launch in early October were sluggish when the threat of Hurricane Ian forced the Space Agency to transport the $4.1 billion giant space launch system (SLS) rocket back to the safety of the hangar.
In recent days, amid the gusts of Hurricane Nicole’s 100 mph gusts, some speculated that NASA’s decision to expose Artemis to the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The storm caused another two days to be postponed until Wednesday - and before it was announced to be suitable for flight, Kennedy Space Center engineers conducted a thorough inspection after the hurricane.
These humans will board Artemis 2, a 10-day temporary mission planned for May 2024 that will send astronauts out of the moon without landing, testing new life protection systems and equipment designed for long-term space flights.
Artemis 1's "crew" includes sensors called Helga, Zohar and Moonikin Campos manipulators, who will measure radiation levels, as well as a plush toy Snoopy and Sean the Sheep as gravity detectors.
With the development of technology, the reason why NASA wants to return to the surface of the moon is also developing. The agency is moving beyond a brief exploration visit in the Apollo era and hopes to build a long-term human presence, including the construction of the Moon Base Camp as the basis for a manned Mars mission in the mid-2030s.
Scientific discovery, economic benefits, building global alliances and inspiring a new generation of explorers are one of the established goals of what NASA calls the "Artemis Generation".
NASA's Moon-to-Mars Vision, with Artemis Program just one part of it, has a broader mission to attract international and commercial partners to deep space exploration, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and heavy-speed Starship rockets, which may be ready for its first orbital test flight as early as next month.
The United States is strongly challenged by Russia, especially China, in the field of manned space technology.
includes NASA analysts believe Artemis plans to have a price tag of $93 billion, including $4.1 billion per first launch, is unsustainable. They noted that this has exceeded the budget by billions of dollars and lagged behind the plan for several years.
Despite this, the United States still hopes that the next step will be to send humans to Mars.
