NASA’s Artemis I set to blast off to the moon and Mars

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, NASA’s most powerful rocket is set to blast off on Monday, on the maiden voyage of a mission to take humans to the Moon, and eventually to Mars.

The space programme called Artemis is to get under way with the blast off of the uncrewed 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at 8:33am (1233 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The capsule will orbit the Moon to see if the vessel is safe for people in the near future.

At some point Artemis will see a woman and a person of colour walk on the Moon for the first time.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said: “This mission goes with a lot of hopes and dreams of a lot of people. And we now are the Artemis generation.”

The massive orange-and-white rocket has been sitting on the space center’s Launch Complex 39B for a week.

Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson gave the “go” to officially begin loading propellants into the Space Launch System rocket with more than three million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

NASA said there is an 80% chance of acceptable weather for a lift-off on time at the beginning of a launch window lasting two hours.

For the first time a woman, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson will give the final green light for lift-off. Women now account for 30% of the staff in the control room; there was just one back with Apollo 11.

AFP reports cameras will capture every moment of the 42-day trip and include a selfie of the spacecraft with the Moon and Earth in the background.

The Orion capsule will orbit around the Moon, coming within 60 miles (100 kilometres) at its closest approach and then firing its engines to get to a distance 40 000 miles beyond, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.

Artemis I will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.