Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida completed final tests and checkouts of the Artemis I Moon rocket prior to launch at Launch Pad 39B. NASA is targeting just 9 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. PDT) on Tuesday, August 16 for availability ahead of a targeted launch on August 29. Yesterday, the carrier crawler passed through the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and under the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Teams are currently working to prepare the embedded stack for release. View of the Moonikin “Campos” secured in place inside the Artemis I Orion crew module atop the Space Launch System rocket in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 3, 2022. Credit: NASA Over the weekend, the team completed testing the flight termination system, which marked the last major activity before the rocket is shut down and the VAB final access platforms are retired. The agency will provide a live stream of traffic beginning at 3 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. PDT) on Tuesday, August 16 on the NASA Kennedy YouTube channel. Two dummies are installed in the passenger seats inside the Artemis I Orion crew module atop the Space Launch System rocket in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 8, 2022. As part of the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Survey experiment (MARE), the two female dummies – Helga and Zohar – are equipped with radiation detectors, while Zohar also wears a radiation protection vest, to determine the radiation risk on her way to the Moon. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux Artemis I is the first comprehensive test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is an unmanned flight test, the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to the Moon. Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a stepping stone to sending astronauts to Mars.
