After weeks of delays, NASA is finally poised for launch of a historic flight this week to send a crew of four astronauts on a trailblazing nine-day trip around the moon and back.The Artemis II mission — with commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — is scheduled to lift off Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 p.m. EDT, atop a Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful operational booster in the world. Forecasters are predicting an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch.”Hey, let’s go to the moon!” exclaimed Wiseman, speaking to a throng of reporters after he and his crewmates arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday. “I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again.”AdvertisementAdvertisementThey originally planned to launch in early February, but the flight was delayed, first by hydrogen fuel leaks and then later by problems with the upper stage propellant pressurization system. NASA says both issues have been resolved, finally clearing the way for blastoff.A test mission, full of firstsThis will be the rocket’s first flight with a crew on aboard, and only its second flight overall. It will also be the first piloted flight of an Orion deep space crew capsule.A major objective is to put the crew ship, named Integrity, through its paces.”This is a test mission,” Wiseman said. “When we get off the planet, we might come right back home. We might spend three or four days around Earth. We might go to the moon. That’s where we want to go, but it is a test mission, and we are ready for every scenario as we ride this amazing Space Launch System in the Orion spacecraft, 250,000 miles away. It’s going to be amazing!”A full moon rises behind the Space Launch System rocket, a reminder of what the rocket was built to do. / Credit: NASA(NASA)Wiseman, Glover and Koch are NASA space veterans. Hansen, making his first space flight, will become the first Canadian to leave Earth orbit.AdvertisementAdvertisementWith their mission to circle the moon, they become the first crew to head for the moon since the Apollo 17 flight that landed there more than 50 years ago.More in ScienceBig step toward a future moon landingIt’s a major milestone in a new NASA space race with China, which plans to put their own “taikonauts” on the lunar surface by 2030. NASA hopes to win that race by launching one and possibly two Artemis moon landing missions in 2028.But first, the agency plans to thoroughly test the Orion capsule, making its first flight with a crew on board, during this Artemis II voyage around the moon.The Artemis II astronauts, left to right: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. / Credit: NASAThen, next year, NASA plans for astronauts to rendezvous and dock in low-Earth orbit with new moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin to test critical systems and verify operating procedures. After that, NASA astronauts will embark on a moon landing near the lunar south pole in just two years.AdvertisementAdvertisementIn the meantime, NASA will be focusing on increasing the flight rate and designing a moon base where astronauts can spend weeks or months at a time carrying out research and technology development.NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who announced the updated plans in February with an estimated cost of $20 billion over seven years, said this “step-by-step approach” is “exactly how NASA achieved the near impossible” with the Apollo program in the 1960s.”But this time, the goal is not flags and footprints. This time, the goal is to stay,” he said, adding, “America will never again give up the moon.”A “crazy first day” in spaceAdvertisementAdvertisementBlazing a trail for the crews that follow, the Artemis II astronauts will climb away from Florida atop the SLS rocket’s nearly 9 million pounds of thrust.Weighing 5.7 million pounds at liftoff, the rocket will accelerate the Orion crew ship on eight-minute climb to space, at which point it will moving at nearly 5 miles per second — fast enough to fly across some 70 football fields, end to end, in just one second.NASA’s Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket in use, will launch the Artemis II flight to circle the moon. / Credit: Graphic by AFP via Getty ImagesTwo rocket firings, one 50 minutes after liftoff and another about an hour later, will set the spacec …
