NASA prepares return to lunar glory with Artemis test flight

A half century after the end of NASA’s Apollo era, the U.S. space agency’s long-anticipated bid to return astronauts to the moon’s surface remains at least

A half century after the end of NASA’s Apollo era, the U.S. space agency’s long-anticipated bid to return astronauts to the moon’s surface remains at least three years away, with much of the necessary hardware still on the drawing board.

But NASA aims to take a giant leap in its renewed lunar ambitions with the debut launch set for next Monday in Florida of its next-generation megarocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew capsule it is designed to carry.

The combined SLS-Orion spacecraft is due for blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, sending the uncrewed capsule around the moon and back to Earth on a six-week test flight called Artemis I.

“We are go for launch,” NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana, a former space shuttle pilot and commander, told a news briefing late on Monday following the mission’s flight readiness review.

The journey is intended to put the SLS vehicle, considered the world’s most complex and powerful rocketship, through a rigorous stress test of its systems during an actual flight before it is deemed ready to carry astronauts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-prepares-return-lunar-glory-artemis-test-flight-rcna44674

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