Artemis set to launch just after midnight

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The NASA moon rocket stands ready at sunrise on Pad 39B before the Artemis 1 mission to orbit the moon at the Kennedy Space Center, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Joel Kowsky/NASA via AP)

The National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) announced Monday that its Artemis launch teams have been called to stations. The countdown has officially begun towards a launch for Artemis I on Wednesday, November 16th, during a two-hour launch window beginning at 12:04 a.m. CST.

The Artemis I mission is unmanned; but is a test of the Artemis spacecraft, which will be carried into space by the Space Launch System (SLS) – the most powerful rocket ever made. The Space Launch System engineering is headquartered at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The SLS, like the Space Shuttle and Apollo missions before it, will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Flight Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Artemis will be the vehicle that will take man back to the Moon after a 50-year absence, including the first woman and first African-American to walk on the Moon. NASA plans to eventually establish a permanent manned presence on the Moon and plans for a manned mission to Mars late in the 2030s.

The Artemis I mission had been planned for September but had to be scrubbed several times due to problems with a fuel line not working properly on the SLS. Then in late September had to be taken off of the launchpad and sent back to the assembly building due to Hurricane Ian

The ship is now repaired, and Florida is sufficiently recovered from the hurricanes that NASA can operate efficiently.

The SLS looks like an Apollo-era Saturn V rocket with two Space Shuttle-era solid rocket boosters attached, and that is not that far off from what it is, but it will allow NASA to carry larger payloads farther than ever before. For decades since Apollo, manned space flight has been limited to low Earth orbit with the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Artemis will make manned space flight beyond Earth orbit not only possible but potentially routine. Artemis I will fly to the Moon, orbit, and then return to Earth. If all goes well with the unmanned missions, NASA could potentially launch a manned Artemis mission as early as 2024. The moon base mission is tentatively scheduled for 2028.

Thousands of Alabamians, both at NASA and its many contractors, have worked for years to make this mission a reality.

You can watch the mission live on NASA TV.

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