At 10:23 am EDT (1423 GMT) today (August 27), the countdown will begin counting down to the scheduled launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, an ambitious first flight to the moon by the agency’s most powerful rocket. Space Launch System (SLS) — and the Orion spacecraft. The uncrewed test flight is scheduled to begin Monday (August 29) at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT) from Pad 39B here at the Kennedy Space Center. “This first launch is another step in our plan for sustainable exploration of the solar system,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, told reporters here at a briefing Friday. You can watch the launch of the Artemis 1 lunar mission live online, courtesy of NASA TV. A live webcast will begin Monday at 6:30 AM. EDT (1030 GMT). Artemis 1 is the vanguard mission of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by 2025 and land the first woman of color and person on the Moon’s south pole, an area astronauts have never seen with their eyes. The mission flight will send an unfilled Orion capsule on a 42-day trip to orbit the moon and return to Earth to check if the spacecraft is ready to carry astronauts. If this mission is successful, NASA will follow it up with Artemis 2, a crewed trip around the Moon in 2024, which will then lead to the Artemis 3 crew landing on the Moon a year later. The ultimate goal, NASA has said, is to conduct annual 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. There is a 70% chance of fair weather for the Artemis 1 launch, with scattered showers the main concern, according to NASA (opens in new tab) and the US Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 weather team. NASA has a two-hour window to launch Artemis 1 to allow some wiggle room if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate. During the two-day countdown to Artemis 1, NASA’s launch controllers will put the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System megarocket and the mission’s Orion spacecraft through their final flight speeds. Engineers closed the hatch on the Orion capsule for the last time on Thursday (August 25). On Friday, engineers also closed the hatch on the SLS rocket’s launch abort system, which sits atop the Orion spacecraft, and retracted the crew access arm that astronauts will eventually use to board the spacecraft for future missions. NASA will begin fueling the SLS rocket in the early hours of Monday, which NASA will broadcast live at 12 a.m. ET. EDT (04:00 GMT). You will be able to watch this event live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA Television, on our Artemis 1 webpage. Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
