In the dark, NASA's mega moon rocket gleamed statuesque in the sky.
The monument topped with the new spaceship rumbled with a force equal to that of 160,000 engines as the clock struck midnight.
The eruption shook the coast of Florida.
The Artemis I mission is NASA's first deep space flight of a capsule designed to carry astronauts. A 40,000-mile swing past the moon is part of the plan if all goes well. The U.S. space agency believes it will have put 1.3 million miles on the odometer.
A successful uncrewed test flight will allow up to four passengers to board the spaceship next time. The era of human-led space exploration ended in 1972 with the last Apollo flight.
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The liftoff comes 2.5 months after NASA nixed its first attempt. The team unexpectedly encountered a sensor that indicated an engine wasn't chilling down properly.
Five days after thescrubbed launch, mission managers tried again. The second attempt was canceled after the team wrestled with a hydrogen fuel leak.
The rocket was hauled back to its hangar by the ground crew. Repairs were made, critical batteries were replaced, and the crew was hoping for the best. They rolled it back out and faced Hurricane Nicole. The vehicle survived the storm despite many fearing it would be damaged.
The launch had its own issues. The valve at the base of the rocket was found to be leaking. The crew went to the pad to tighten the bolts. The Space Force, which oversees rocket launches, encountered a strange tech issue. They had to replace a bad switch in order to access the rocket's flight terminated system. NASA would have been forced into another scrub if they hadn't solved it.
The rocket was built by the people across the country.
This is for the Artemis generation.
The new Orion spacecraft will make a couple of close approaches to the moon during the Artemis I flight. Credit: Illustration by NASA / Liam Yanulis
NASA wants to one day build a lunar base, see the first woman and person of color walk on the moon, and spend long stretches conducting research and gathering samples on its surface, all while keeping one eye fixed.
The deputy program manager of NASA's exploration ground systems said that he has never met a person who doesn't get excited about space. The Statue of Liberty has a top speed of 18,000 mph. It's mind-blowing.
"It is absolutely mind blowing."
The $4.1 billion mission is intended to demonstrate whether the vehicles are safe for sending humans on long expeditions. NASA wants to use the moon as a testing ground for astronauts.
The Artemis I moonshot will include a trip of 40,000 miles past the moon and a total of 1.3 million miles. Three-plus weeks will be spent trying out various moon moons. The capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean when it comes back.
The mission was reduced from 45 days to 25 days. It's not arbitrary. The timing of the sun, Earth, and moon are looked at by NASA. The atmosphere and forces of gravity have an effect on when Orion can come back. The team is looking for a plan that provides daylight when the capsule splashes down.
Orion's heat shield must protect the capsule from a fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere. Credit: NASA
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The primary goal of the flight is to get the spaceship to go somewhere. One of the main purposes is to see how the heat shield will hold up when the spaceship plummets through the atmosphere. The spaceship will travel at 24,500 mph and be hotter than any other spaceship.
Kelly DeFazio said that the shield was 30 percent larger than previous hardware because of new manufacturing methods.
She said that the heat shield on the back end would show how the material was brought into the 21st century.
The Artemis program is named after Apollo's twin sister in Greek mythology. The second space race with China has given Congress a sense of urgent need to get back to the moon. It's a matter of national security for politicians to return.
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The first moonwalk of the Artemis III itinerary has been delayed due to bureaucratic red tape and escalating costs. The agency will have spent a lot of money on Artemis.
Inspector General Paul Martin, the federal watchdog over the space agency, said in March that the SLS, an extremely expensive single-use rocket, would "inhibit, if not derail" getting to the moon and Mars.
Politics and economics were not on the minds of mission managers at Cape Canaveral, who celebrated the accomplishment as one of the best moments in the agency's history.
The associate administrator of NASA said he was a product of the Apollo generation and looked at what it did for them. I can't wait to see what comes from the Artemis generation because I believe it will inspire more than Apollo did.
"I cannot wait to see what comes from the Artemis generation because I think it's going to inspire even more than Apollo did."
After 1.5 hours after the launch, inflight engines will give the spacecraft the boost it needs to perform a translunar injection, a maneuver that will help the moon's gravity pull it in.
A service module provided by the European Space Agency will be used to fire an engine into the moon. Apollo 13's record for the farthest distance traveled by a passenger spaceship was broken by that maneuver. As it hugs the moon's curves just 60 miles above the surface, this will give the explorer an intimate look at the lunar terrain.
The moon's gravity will be used to make a half-lap around it over the course of two weeks. The spaceship will get a boost from the moon and then slingshot back to earth.
The final test will show how the heat shield can block the punishing temperatures of reentering as it plunges at 32 times the speed of sound.
Jim Free is the head of NASA's exploration systems development. The extraordinary challenges that lay ahead have been emphasized by him.
He told reporters last week that they had seen challenges getting all their systems to work together. We do a flight test to make sure. We're learning by taking more risk on this mission and going after the things that can't be modeled.
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