Artemis I mission to the moon: how to watch

For the first time in 50 years, a spacecraft is preparing to travel to the moon.

The unmanned Artemis I mission, including the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft, is aiming for liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida between 8:33 a.m. ET and 10:33 a.m. ET on August 29 .

Although there is no human crew aboard the mission, this is the first step in the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land them on Mars.

The Orion spacecraft will enter a distant retrograde orbit of the Moon and travel 40,000 miles beyond, further than any spacecraft designed to carry humans. Crews will fly a similar trajectory aboard Artemis II in 2024, and the first woman and next man to land on the moon are expected to arrive at the moon’s south pole in late 2025 with the Artemis III mission.

The agency will post live views and coverage in English and Spanish on its website and on NASA TV before, during and after the launch of Artemis I. The broadcast begins at 12:00 p.m. ET when super-cold propellant is loaded into the SLS rocket.

Performances by celebrities such as Jack Black, Chris Evans and Keke Palmer, as well as performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock and “America the Beautiful” by The Philadelphia Orchestra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma are also part of the programme .

Once launched, NASA will conduct a post-launch briefing, and later in the day the agency will share the first Earth views from cameras aboard the Orion spacecraft.

Orion’s journey will take 42 days as it travels to, orbits, and returns to the moon — covering a total of 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers). The capsule will land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on October 10th.

Cameras inside and outside Orion will share images and video throughout the mission, including live views of the Callisto experiment, which will record a stream of a mannequin named Commander Moonikin Campos seated in the commander’s seat. If you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, you can ask it for the mission’s location every day.

Here’s everything you can expect before, during and after launch.

COUNT DOWN

The official launch countdown begins on August 27th at 10:23am ET.

The call to the stations will be made Saturday morning at the Kennedy Space Center, as well as teams offering support from various centers around the country. At this point, all teams associated with the mission arrive at their consoles and report that they are ready, starting a two-day countdown.

Over the weekend, engineers will spin up the Orion spacecraft, the preliminary cryogenic propulsion stage (the upper part of the rocket) and the core stage, recharge the batteries and do final prep for the thrusters.

Late Sunday evening through early Monday morning, the launch team will conduct a briefing to discuss weather conditions and decide whether it’s “go” or “no go” to begin refueling the rocket.

If all looks good, the team will begin refueling the rocket’s core phase eight hours before launch. The upper school begins to refuel five hours beforehand. After that, the team will top up and top up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which will fizzle out during the refueling process.

About 50 minutes before launch, the final briefing from the NASA test manager takes place. A scheduled 30-minute countdown stop begins approximately 40 minutes before departure.

The launch leader will quiz the team to ensure each station “takes off” 15 minutes before launch.

At 10 minutes and counting, things kick into high gear as the spaceship and rocket go through the final steps. Much of the action takes place in the last minute, when the ground launch sequencer sends the command for the missile flight computer’s automatic launch sequencer, which takes over about 30 seconds before launch.

In the final seconds, hydrogen burns off, the four RS-25 engines start, resulting in booster ignition and liftoff at T minus zero.

JOURNEY TO THE MOON

After launch, the solid rocket boosters will separate from the spacecraft about two minutes into flight and splash in the Atlantic Ocean, with other components also being jettisoned shortly after. The rocket’s core stage will separate about eight minutes later and fall toward the Pacific Ocean, allowing the wings of Orion’s solar array to deploy.

The maneuver to raise the Perigran occurs about 12 minutes after launch, when the ICPS undergoes a burn to raise Orion’s altitude so it doesn’t reenter Earth’s atmosphere. Shortly thereafter occurs the translunar injection burn, during which the ICPS will increase Orion’s speed from 17,500 miles per hour (28,163 kilometers per hour) to 22,600 miles per hour (36,371 kilometers per hour) to escape Earth’s gravitational pull and settle on the to make way the moon.

After this fire, the ICPS will separate from Orion.

At approximately 4:30 p.m., Orion will make its first outbound trajectory correction with the help of the European Service Module, which provides the spacecraft with power, propulsion, and thermal controls. This maneuver puts Orion on its way to the moon.

In the next few days after launch, Orion will make its way to the moon, coming within 60 miles (96 kilometers) of the lunar surface on the sixth day of the voyage—or September 3 if the launch is scheduled for August—29. The service module will place Orion in distant retrograde orbit around the Moon on September 10th or 7th.

Orion will surpass the distance record of 248,654 miles (400,169 kilometers) set by Apollo 13 in 1970 on September 8 as it orbits the moon. The spacecraft will reach its maximum distance from Earth of 280,000 miles (450,616 kilometers) on September 23 when it ventures 40,000 miles (64,373 kilometers) beyond the Moon.

That’s 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers) further than the Apollo 13 record.

Orion will make its second-closest approach to the lunar surface on October 3, to within 804 kilometers (500 miles).

Shortly before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the service module will separate from Orion. The spacecraft will impact the top of Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 25,000 miles per hour (40,233 kilometers per hour), and its heat shield will experience temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

The atmosphere will slow Orion to about 300 miles per hour (482 kilometers per hour), and a series of parachutes will slow it to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) before plunging into the Pacific at 11:53 a.m

Streamed live from NASA’s website, Splashdown will collect views from the 17 cameras aboard the recovery ship and helicopters that will await Orion’s return.

The landing and recovery team will collect the Orion capsule, and the data gathered from the spacecraft will determine what lessons have been learned before humans return to the moon.