Launches: What’s the big deal about Artemis?

Details on the upcoming moon mission

Scott Manley is a Scottish-American YouTube personality (1.48 million subscribers), with a background in astronomy, physics, computers and engineering. He likes to talk about developments in rocket science. Much has been written about the Artemis 1 mission. However, this video is one of Manley’s best, if you’re interested in learning more technical details of the mission. Manley provides a wealth of info about the mighty SLS – world’s tallest rocket – and the Orion spacecraft that’ll travel (uncrewed) to the moon and back, hopefully over the coming month if all goes well with Monday’s launch. Manley wrote on August 25, 2022:

NASA’s new rocket has been in development for over a decade … But now, it’s on the pad, closed out and ready to launch as early as Monday morning [August 29] on a trip around the moon that will test the rocket during launch and the spacecraft in space for 6 weeks before returning to Earth with a make or break test of the heat shield and other recovery systems.

Artemis 1 moon launch on August 29. How to watch

Artemis 1 is our 1st step in a human return to the moon

Artemis 1 will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is providing around-the-clock video coverage of Pad 39B, where the spacecraft is currently poised. The launch window opens at 8:33 a.m. EDT (12:33 UTC) on Monday, August 29. The objective of the mission is partly to test NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a vehicle comparable to the great Saturn V that carried the first astronauts to the moon in the Apollo program of the ’60s and ’70s.

And, of course, the ultimate goal of the Artemis program is to send humans back to the moon by the middle of this decade.

It’s exciting! Read more about the Artemis 1 mission here.

Bottom line: You’ll find technical details about the components of the Artemis 1 moon mission – the SLS booster and Orion spacecraft – in this excellent video by Scott Manley.

Here’s Scott Manley’s YouTube channel.

Follow Scott Manley on Twitter.

If you really like what Scott does, you can support him directly through Patreon.

The post Launches: What’s the big deal about Artemis? first appeared on EarthSky.