CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The countdown is set to begin for NASA’s biggest test flight of the year.
At 10:23 a.m. EDT (1423 GMT) today (Aug. 27), the countdown clock will begin ticking for the scheduled launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, an ambitious first flight to the Moon in the agency’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), and its Orion spacecraft. The uncrewed test flight is scheduled to launch Monday (Aug. 29) at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT) from Pad 39B here at the Kennedy Space Center.
“This first launch is another step in the plan for our sustainable exploration of the solar system,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, told reporters here at a briefing Friday. You can watch the launch of the Artemis 1 moon mission live online, courtesy of NASA TV. A live webcast will begin Monday at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 Moon Mission: Live Updates
Artemis 1 is the flagship mission of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by 2025 and land the first woman and person of color at the lunar south pole, a region never before seen by astronauts with his own eyes. The mission flight will send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day journey to orbit the Moon and return to Earth to test whether the spacecraft is ready to carry astronauts.
If this mission is successful, NASA will follow it up with Artemis 2, a manned trip around the Moon in 2024, leading to the Artemis 3 manned lunar landing a year later. The ultimate goal, NASA has said, is to conduct annual missions to the Moon after Artemis 3, land a crew from a Gateway space station in lunar orbit, and then aim for manned flights to Mars.
There is a 70 percent chance of good weather for the Artemis 1 launch, with scattered showers the main concern, according to NASA (opens in a new tab) and the Delta 45 Space Launch Weather Group of the US Space Force. NASA has a two-hour window to launch Artemis 1 to allow some leeway if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.
Related: Artemis 1: 10 Wild Facts About NASA’s Moon Mission
During the two-day countdown to Artemis 1, NASA launch controllers will put the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) Space Launch System megarocket and its Orion spacecraft through their final paces of flight. Engineers closed the hatch on the Orion capsule for the last time on Thursday (August 25).
On Friday, engineers also closed the hatch on the SLS rocket’s launch abort system, which sits atop the Orion spacecraft, and retracted the crew access arm that the astronauts will eventually use to board to the spacecraft for future missions.
NASA will begin fueling the SLS rocket early Monday morning, which NASA will broadcast live at 12 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT). You can watch this event live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, on our Artemis 1 webpage.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.