CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The countdown is ready to begin for NASA’s biggest test flight of the year.
At 10:23 a.m. EDT (1423 GMT) today (Aug. 27), the countdown clock will begin counting down to the scheduled launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, an ambitious first flight to the Moon on the agency’s most powerful rocket to date, the Space Launch System (SLS) — and its Orion spacecraft. The uncrewed test flight is scheduled to launch Monday (Aug. 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 the plan for our sustained 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. The live broadcast will begin Monday at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 Moon Mission: Live Updates
Artemis 1 is the flagship mission of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by 2025 and land the first woman and person of color on the Moon’s south pole, a region astronauts have never seen with their own eyes . The mission’s flight will send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day trip into orbit around the moon and return to Earth to test whether the spacecraft is ready to carry astronauts.
If that mission succeeds, NASA will follow it up with Artemis 2, a manned lunar orbit in 2024 that will then lead to the Artemis 3 manned lunar landing a year later. The ultimate goal, NASA said, is to conduct annual missions to the moon after Artemis 3, perform crewed landings from the Gateway space station in lunar orbit, and then aim for crewed flights to Mars.
There’s a 70 percent chance of good 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 in which to launch Artemis 1 to allow for a shake-up if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.
Related: Artemis 1: 10 wild facts about NASA’s lunar mission
During the two-day countdown to Artemis 1, NASA controllers will put the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) Space Launch System mission’s megarocket and its Orion spacecraft through their final stages of flight. Engineers closed the Orion capsule’s hatch for the final time on Thursday (August 25).
On Friday, engineers also closed the hatch on the SLS rocket’s launch termination 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 wee hours of Monday morning, which NASA will broadcast live at 12 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT). You’ll be able to watch this event live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, on our Artemis 1 webcast page.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
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