The most powerful space rocket ever to leave Earth will take a 50-year leap across the heavens on Monday, one of the last crucial test steps before humans return to the moon.
Artemis 1, a six-person deep-space exploration capsule, atop a 98m (322ft), 2,600-ton Space Launch System megarocket, is scheduled for its maiden liftoff at 8.33am.
As well as the spectacular show of fire expected to draw hundreds of thousands of spectators to Florida's space coast, NASA is keen to showcase the progress it has made in its efforts to place astronauts back on the moon
The telescope zooms in on another planet.
After the conclusion of a flight readiness review this week, the associate administrator of Nasa said that this day had been a long time coming. It's outstanding that we are a go for launch.
There will be two close fly-bys 62 miles above the lunar surface on Monday as part of a test flight that will last 42 days and go to 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon.
There are mannequins that will allow Nasa to evaluate its next-generation spacesuits and radiation levels, and a soft toy that will float around the capsule as a zerogravity indicator.
A successful mission would propel the agency closer to its goal of sending two astronauts, including the first woman, for landing at the moon's south pole by the end of the century.
An interim second test flight, Artemis II, is scheduled for May 2024, and will carry a crew of four to the moon and back, but not landing, for the first time since 1972
The last two men to set foot on the moon were carried on that mission.
The Artemis generation is now underway. The generation we were in was called the Apollo generation. There is a new generation. Bill Nelson, the administrator of Nasa, told a press briefing that this is a new type of astronauts.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo, so he said: "To all of us who gaze up at the moon, dreaming of the day we return to the lunar surface, we are here."
SLS is a new rocket but it is heavily influenced by existing technology. The 8.8m pounds of core stage thrust is 15% more powerful than the Apollo-era Saturn V rockets and comes from four recycled space shuttle engines.
The two five-stage solid rocket boosters are based on three decades of knowledge and experience gained with the space shuttle booster.
A trans-lunar injection burn will increase the craft's speed from 17,500mph to 22,500mph to escape the pull of Earth's gravity and guide it to a precise point close enough to be captured by the moon.
Nelson said the flight would allow managers to thoroughly test the capabilities of the rocket and capsule.
We are going to put it through a test. He said that they were going to make it do things they wouldn't do with a crew on it.
It will be faster and hotter than any vehicle before it when it returns to Earth in October.
The capsule will decelerate to around 300mph after travelling at up to 25,000mph. Three parachutes will deploy to help slow the plane to less than 20 mph for a splashdown.
A rocky path has led to the development of the first moon craft. Three years behind schedule and over budget, the SLS rocket ran into problems during testing last year.
The inspector general of Nasa reported to Congress in March that the cost of each launch was unsustainable. With large amounts going to private contractors in the US, including Boeing, which built the SLS core stage, it is estimated that Nasa will have spent $93 billion on the program by the year 2025.
According to John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, NASA has taken steps to buy a production series of SLS, which will help in reducing the cost if you buy several at a time instead of one each.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is concerned about the lack of a defined leadership structure and control of the Apollo and space shuttle projects because of the reliance on outside partners.
The group told the congressional science, space and technology committee that a piecemeal approach is doomed to fail.
The criticism is valid. There is general agreement that the management structure Nasa has evolved for Artemis needs fixing, and that there needs to be a central structure to manage all the elements of the project.
A schedule isn't really a schedule. Between this mission and the next, I don't think I'll be very aggressive.
It's a test mission. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. We won't know if the failures can be fixed until we fly the mission. The world is paying attention.
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