NASA's Artemis mission will see a journey further beyond the Moon than ever before. Melissa Bradshaw takes a look at its bumpy progress to date. At the time of writing, following a series of technical hitches resulting in multiple delays, NASA had assigned a new launch window for its Artemis I Moon mission, closing on October 5th. If all goes to plan, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will have finally ascended from the Kennedy Space Centre's Launch Complex 39B in Florida by the time you're reading this, though Tropical Storm Ian may have caused further delays. Unmanned on this occasion, the first mission of NASA's Artemis programme (Artemis I) is aiming to lay the foundation for future missions where astronauts will be on board. The rocket will carry the Orion spacecraft toward its destination thousands of miles beyond the Moon - a total of around 1.3 million miles will be travelled over the course of approximately 39 days. Through the Artemis programme, NASA aspires to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond, aiming to enable human exploration of even farther space destinations - including eventually taking astronauts to Mars. Through the technologies used and research carried out during further lunar exploration, NASA believes Artemis can provide a wealth of knowledge which could then be applied to future missions to the Red Planet.
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