{"id":571877,"date":"2026-03-31T01:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T01:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571877\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T01:15:09","slug":"nasa-begins-countdown-for-humanitys-first-moon-launch-in-53-years-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571877\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Begins Countdown For Humanity’s First Moon Launch in 53 Years : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2013 NASA began the countdown Monday for humanity’s first launch to the moon<\/a> in 53 years.<\/p>\n

The 32-story Space Launch System rocket is poised to blast off Wednesday evening with four astronauts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After a day in orbit around Earth, their Orion capsule will propel them to the moon<\/a> and back. There are no stops \u2013 just a quick U-turn around the moon. 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.<\/p>\n

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

\"FourNASA astronauts: Reid Wiseman \u2013 Artemis II commander, Victor Glover \u2013 Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch \u2013 Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen \u2013 Artemis II mission specialist, in front of NASA’s Artemis II SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, on Monday, March 30, 2026. (Bill Ingalls\/NASA via AP)<\/p>\n

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

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

The rocket returned to the pad<\/a> 1 1\/2 weeks ago, and its US-Canadian crew arrived at the launch site<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n

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

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Artemis II’s pilot Victor Glover said over the weekend that he wants 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

Related: NASA’s First Moon Crew in More Than 50 Years Is Making History Already<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time, Glover, who is Black, looks 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2013 NASA began the countdown Monday for humanity’s first launch to the moon in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-571877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}