The next moonshot is going to happen.
Artemis 1 will be launched at 8:33 a.m. On Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a SLS megarocket will be used to send an uncrewed capsule on a trip to the moon.
The first flight for SLS and the Artemis program of moon exploration is now in the home stretch and NASA has been preparing for it for a long time. The major mission milestones to watch for are before and after launch. NASA's Artemis 1 press kit has a lot of information about the milestones.
NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission has live updates.
At 10:33 a.m., the Artemis 1 count will begin. The launch team members are arriving at their stations.
Over the next 14 hours or so, these people will check off a number of things. The sound suppression system at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39B will be filled with water by the team. The SLS upper stage and core stage will be powered up by them.
The Artemis 1 team will charge the flight batteries on Sunday. All non-essential personnel will leave Pad 39B after the liftoff. The ground launch sequencer will be activated around that time by the team.
The Artemis 1 team will conduct a weather and fueling briefing late Sunday night and early Monday morning. The team will make a decision before midnight whether to start fueling up the SLS or not.
The SLS propellants will be loaded early Monday morning about eight hours before the liftoff. This is a lengthy process with a lot of steps, including "replenish" operations that keep topping off the rocket's fuel, which will continue until T0
There is a built-in hold that will start at 7 pm. 40 minutes before lift off. At 15 minutes, the launch director will ask the Artemis 1 team if the mission is worth the wait. The terminal count will begin at T 10 minutes if it is.
The last 10 minutes will include the switch of the two SLS stages to internal power and the end of propellant replenish activities. The command for the SLS core's four engines will be sent at T 10 seconds. The Artemis 1 stack will rise off Pad 39B when the clock hits zero.
Two minutes and 12 seconds after launch, Artemis 1's two strap-on solid rocket boosters will separate and fall to the ocean. About a minute later, the emergency launch-abort system will be thrown away.
After liftoff, the SLS core engines will shut down for eight minutes and four seconds, and the rocket's two stages will separate. The deployment of the solar array will take about twelve minutes.
The SLS upper stage will be in the sky. Fifty-one minutes after liftoff, the upper stage will conduct a 22-second engine burn to get itself farther away from our planet. At 10:30 a.m. The upper stage is going to perform an 18-minute burn in order to reach the moon.
At 11:30 a.m., the SLS upper stage will be empty. Two hours and six minutes after liftoff, it was on its way to the moon.
The discarded upper stage needs to deploy 10 tiny cubesats in order to carry it. The cubesats will do a lot of research in deep space, from studying how radiation affects yeast to hunting for water ice on the moon. Three hours and 40 minutes after launch, the cubesats will begin to deploy from the adapter, and the last of them will fly free.
The service module that drives the capsule will keep on going. The Artemis 1 press kit states that flight days two through five will be dedicated to outbound transit. On flight day six, on Sept. 3, a new phase will begin, which will lead to a retrograde path around the moon.
On September 3, the capsule will perform an "outward powered flyby burn" and achieve its closest approach to the moon. On September 7th, the engines will be fired up again and the DRO will be assigned.
The capsule will travel farther from Earth than any other human-rated craft. The current record is held by NASA's Apollo 13 mission, which set a new distance traveled from home in April 1970.
NASA sent people to the moon.
It will be in the lunar DRO for a couple of weeks. The capsule will leave on Sept. 21 for the long journey back to Earth. The maximum distance from Earth will be reached two days later.
It will take 10 days to leave the moon. A "return flyby" engine burn will take the capsule to the moon. A slingshot-like gravity assist from the moon will allow the spaceship to leave the lunar neighborhood and return to Earth.
It will take a week to get back. On October 10th, Orion will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
You can see that there is a lot to look forward to. The actual timing may be different depending on how the mission goes. If Artemis 1 doesn't get off the ground, things will change. The dates of Sept. 2 and Sept. 5 are being eyed by NASA.
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