The spacecraft will zip around the moon and back before landing in the Pacific Ocean.
NASA's gigantic Artemis"mega moon rocket," the most powerful space rocket ever built, is gearing up to blast off to the moon. The Artemis 1 mission will launch Monday, Aug. 29, on an uncrewed test flight of the spacecraft powering NASA's Artemis moon program, which will eventually send humans back to our nearest natural satellite and then hopefully to Mars. Here's the plan for the launch and how you can watch it online.
After it launches, the spacecraft's boosters, which are capable of 8.8 million pounds of thrust, will fall away, and the Orion module will zip 40,000 miles beyond the moon before returning to Earth on Oct. 10."We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the moon," NASA representatives wrote on the Artemis mission webpage.