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NASA launches two-day countdown to Artemis I mission

In about 46 hours, the rocket Artemis I will be ready to take off on an unmanned flight around the Moon, and NASA is counting down the minutes.

The countdown officially started at 9:53 am on Saturday, according to a tweet from NASA’s Artemis account.

The countdown began as the launch teams arrived at their stations at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch timeline was shaped by lessons learned from wet testing, held on August 22.

The test simulated almost every part of the launch, including loading the spacecraft with jet fuel, but did not take off.

The first orders of business are to fill the water tank for the sound suppression system, prepare the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen systems, power up the Orion spacecraft, power up the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, power up the central stage, and prepare all four RS-25 Motors, according to a launch timeline on the NASA website.

The Artemis I rocket is expected to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday between 8:33 am and 10:33 am ET (9:33 am and 11:33 am ET), assuming the weather is favorable. The stack, which consists of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft, is 98 meters high.

The Artemis I mission is the first step in NASA’s plan to send humans to the moon again, 50 years after the last manned trip to the moon. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will orbit the moon, traveling more than 2.1 million kilometers in just 42 days, before crashing off the coast of California in October.

The launch will lay the groundwork for NASA’s goal to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon by 2025 and ultimately address human exploration of Mars.

Source: CNN Brasil

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