• Special 50 years of Apollo 11

The powerful

SLS rocket with the Orion capsule

takes off today from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), to undertake an unmanned trip to the Moon that marks the start of the Artemis program, with which NASA seeks to establish a permanent human presence on the satellite terrestrial "and beyond".

Liftoff is scheduled for 08:33 local time (

2:30 p.m., Spanish peninsular time

), from launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.

The weather forecast is 80% favorable to meet the launch on time, whose takeoff window is two hours, according to AFP.

Fifty years after the last Apollo flight, the Artemis 1 mission will mark the launch of

the US program to return to the Moon

, and which could then allow to go to Mars aboard the same spacecraft.

"With Artemis 1, which will go unmanned, we are going to test all the mission's systems for the first time: those of the

SLS

rocket and those of the

Orion

spacecraft . If all goes well, in 2024 we will send Artemis 2, with four astronauts on board. that will go around the Moon. By 2025 Artemis 3 is scheduled to land on the Moon with two or more astronauts, and from then

on the plan is to send a lunar mission every year

", summarized NASA engineer Carlos García-Galán in this complete report signed by Teresa Guerrero.

If the mission cannot be launched this August 29 due to a technical problem or the weather,

the next opportunities will be on September 2 and 5

.

In the event that it has to be postponed for more days, the ship and the rocket will be moved back to the assembly building to recharge their systems, and a new schedule will be scheduled for mid-September.

Depending on which day the liftoff occurs, the mission will last between 26 and 42 days.

This has to do with the trajectory that the ship will follow and the place where the Sun is during the return, since it must splash down in the Pacific Ocean during daylight hours so that it can be rescued by a navy ship several miles away. from San Diego.

At various times during the mission, the

Orion capsule

will be within 100 kilometers of the Moon, which will be the closest it will get.

If Artemis 1 is a success, NASA will soon announce the identity of the astronauts who will go on Artemis 2 in 2024.

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