Artemis 1: NASA to launch its new lunar programme with a test-flight today

NASA's most powerful rocket yet is set to blast off Monday on the maiden voyage of a mission to take humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars.

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, the space program called Artemis is to get under way with the blast off of the uncrewed 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at 8:33 am or around 6.30 pm IST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The goal of the flight, baptized Artemis 1, is to test the SLS and the Orion crew capsule that sits atop the rocket.

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

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

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

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Its fuel tanks were to be filled overnight Sunday into Monday with more than three million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

NASA said there is an 80 percent chance of acceptable weather for a liftoff 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 liftoff. Women now account for 30 percent of the staff in the control room; there was just one back with Apollo 11.

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 kilometers) 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.

(AFP)