NASA is about to take the first step on its journey to return people to the moon by the end of the decade. If all goes well, a massive uncrewed rocket will lift off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday morning, then circle the moon in an orbit that will take it deep into space before it returns to Earth 42 days later.
The Artemis I mission marks a critical moment for NASA and the space industry. The Artemis program, named for the twin sister of the god Apollo in Greek mythology, aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon as early as 2025. Among the critical components of the mission are the Boeing Co.-built rocket, named the Space Launch System, and the Orion crew capsule made by Lockheed Martin Corp. A future landing vehicle will be supplied by Space Exploration Technology Corp.
The stakes are high for both NASA and its corporate contractors after a decade of development delays and cost overruns. It marks the first time since the end of the Space Shuttle program that NASA has debuted a new flagship vehicle and system geared toward human spaceflight. After the Shuttle was retired, NASA relied on Russia’s Soyuz rocket to get humans to and from the International Space Station and, more recently, has turned to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule.
