Moonshot

If all goes well today, tomorrow’s DONUT will read like this: ”that’s one small step for Artemis, one giant leap for NASA.”

🤔 What are we talking about?... Today marks the first big test for NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to return astronauts to the moon’s surface – including the first woman and first person of color – for the first time in 50 years.

• Artemis I, the program’s uncrewed first mission, is scheduled to blast off this morning, with liftoff expected to occur between 8:33am and 10:33am ET – if everything goes according to plan.🤞

🚀🌕 The mission, should you choose to accept it… Put very simply: Artemis I’s aim is to launch the world’s most powerful rocket on a journey around the Moon, then guide it back to Earth.

Put not so simply: Today marks the first test of said powerful rocket, aka the Space Launch System, which NASA has been developing since 2011.

• The roughly 42-day Artemis I mission will see the spacecraft carry an uncrewed Orion space capsule on a 1.3 million-mile voyage, round trip.
• If successful, the mission would set the stage for a surface landing as early as 2025 – meaning astronauts would set foot on the Moon for the first time since 1972.

✋ Yes, but… Experts say a failed SLS launch would “imperil” the entire Artemis program “because a failing, over-budget program is far harder to garner political support for,” per Axios. The Artemis I launch was initially scheduled for 2016, but has been delayed 16 times due to technical issues.

• Paul Martin, NASA’s inspector general, estimated the first four Artemis missions will cost $4.1 billion in total, a figure he said “strikes us as unsustainable.”

+Tune in: Watch a livestream of this morning’s launch here.