{"id":575348,"date":"2026-03-31T01:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T01:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/575348\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T01:54:09","slug":"nasa-begins-countdown-for-humanitys-first-launch-to-the-moon-in-53-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/575348\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA begins countdown for humanity’s first launch to the moon in 53 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA has begun the countdown for humanity’s first launch to the moon in 53 years.<\/p>\n

The 32-storey Space Launch System rocket is poised to blast off early Thursday morning with four astronauts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a day in orbit around Earth, their Orion capsule will propel them to the moon and back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are no stops \u2014 just a quick U-turn around the moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The launch is expected to take place on Wednesday afternoon local time, early on Thursday morning AEST. (AP: John Raoux)<\/p>\n

The nearly 10-day flight will end with a splashdown in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

“Our team has worked extremely hard to get us to this moment,” said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Certainly all indications are right now we are in excellent, excellent shape.”<\/p>\n

Managers said the rocket was doing well following the latest round of repairs.<\/a><\/p>\n

Forecasters said the weather should cooperate.<\/p>\n

NASA’s Artemis II mission should have soared in February, but was grounded by hydrogen fuel leaks.<\/a><\/p>\n

The leaks were fixed, but then a helium pressurisation line became clogged, forcing a return to the hangar late last month.<\/p>\n

The rocket returned to the pad one and a half weeks ago, and its US-Canadian crew arrived at the launch site on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

This trip to the moon will be the first in 53 years. (AP \/ NASA: John W. Young)<\/p>\n

Unlike Apollo, which sent only men to the moon from 1968 through 1972, Artemis’s debut crew includes a woman, a person of colour and a non-US citizen.<\/p>\n

Australia aids Artemis II as NASA returns to the Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

Canberra-based communications systems will support NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century.<\/p>\n

Artemis II’s pilot Victor Glover said over the weekend that he wanted young people to see them and think, “Girl power and that’s awesome, and that young brown boys and girls can look at me and go, ‘Hey, he looks like me and he’s doing what???'”<\/p>\n

At the same time, Glover, who is Black, looked forward to when “one day we don’t have to talk about these firsts” and exploring the cosmos becomes an all-encompassing “human history”.<\/p>\n

NASA has the first six days of April to launch Artemis II before standing down until the end of the month.<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA has begun the countdown for humanity’s first launch to the moon in 53 years. The 32-storey Space…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[216872,64,63,277279,216874,282198,131,282199,108940,128,42593,51322],"class_list":["post-575348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-artemis-ii","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-christina-koch","tag-jeremy-hansen","tag-moon-launch","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-rocket","tag-reid-wiseman","tag-science","tag-the-moon","tag-victor-glover"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}