NASA Moon Launch: Highlights From NASA’s Artemis Moon Rocket Launch (Published 2022) (2024)

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NASA Blazes a Path Back to the Moon With Artemis Rocket Launch

This flight, evoking the bygone Apollo era, is a crucial test for NASA’s Artemis program that aims to put astronauts, after five decades of loitering in low-Earth orbit, back on the moon.

“We are all part of something incredibly special,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the launch director, said to her team at the Kennedy Space Center after the launch. “The first launch of Artemis. The first step in returning our country to the moon and on to Mars.”

For NASA, the mission ushers in a new era of lunar exploration, one that seeks to unravel scientific mysteries in the shadows of craters in the polar regions, test technologies for dreamed-of journeys to Mars and spur private enterprise to chase new entrepreneurial frontiers farther out in the solar system.

As China and other countries are vying to explore space, Wednesday’s launch also highlights a growing philosophical tension about how America should pursue its space aspirations. NASA has spent more than $40 billion to date to get Artemis off the ground. The expenditure illustrates how the space program continues to resemble the way that the Pentagon builds aircraft carriers and F-35 fighters — expensive and slow, but primarily controlled by the federal government because no commercial market yet exists for the kinds of large rockets and deep-space transports that NASA considers to be necessary for its moon exploration program.

The alternative approach, where NASA would be a customer or a passenger on commercial spacecraft, could be cheaper and faster, relying on innovative spacecraft built by entrepreneurial companies like SpaceX, led by Elon Musk.

“If you were serious about going back to the moon, you would just go all-in on commercial approaches,” said Charles Miller, who worked at NASA from 2009 to 2012 as a senior adviser for commercial space activities.

But the commercial approach might not exactly provide what NASA and other government decision makers want, and companies can often change plans or go out of business.

In the geopolitical background for policymakers is a growing competition with China, the only country that now has robotic spacecraft on the lunar surface. China last month completed construction of its own space station, and the country’s space officials aim to construct a research outpost on the moon and send astronauts there in the 2030s.

Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, has warned that China could become the dominant lunar superpower, concerns that echo the jostling between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s that motivated the Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972.

While it may not have mollified the critics, the 322-foot-tall rocket, known as the Space Launch System, or S.L.S., was an imposing sight on the launchpad. However, with the middle-of-the-night launch time, the Florida Space Coast was not as jammed with spectators as it had been for earlier launch attempts.

Wednesday’s launch attempt followed two scrubbed launch attempts in August and September, one halted by an engine that appeared to be too warm, and the other involving a hydrogen leak in a fuel line. Hurricane Ian led NASA to skip another launch window in late September and early October, and Hurricane Nicole prompted a delay by a couple of days before Wednesday’s launch.

The countdown proceeded smoothly until a hydrogen leak in a new location popped up at about 9:15 p.m. A “red crew” of two technicians and a safety officer went to the launchpad to tighten bolts on a valve, which stemmed the leak.

A faulty Ethernet switch also disrupted the countdown, cutting off data from a radar needed to track the rocket. The U.S. Space Force, which ensures safety of rocket launches from the Kennedy Space Center, replaced the equipment, and the countdown resumed.

A final poll by Ms. Blackwell-Thompson confirmed the rocket was ready to go to space.

At 1:47 a.m., the four engines on the rocket’s core stage ignited, along with two skinnier side boosters. As the countdown hit zero, clamps holding the rocket down let go, and the vehicle slipped Earth’s bonds.

At liftoff, flames from the engines were incredibly bright, like giant welding torches.

“I’m telling you we’d never seen such a tail of flame,” Mr. Nelson said.

As the rocket ascended, it produced a loud rumble of sound that rolled across the space center.

A few minutes later, the side boosters and then the giant core stage separated. The rocket’s upper engine then ignited to carry the Orion spacecraft, where astronauts will sit during later missions, toward orbit.

Less than two hours after launch, the upper stage fired one last time to send Orion on a path toward the moon. On Monday, Orion will pass within about 80 miles of the moon’s surface. After going around the moon for a couple of weeks, Orion will head back to Earth, splashing down on Dec. 11 in the Pacific Ocean, about 60 miles off the coast of California.

“We’ve laid the foundation for the Artemis program and many generations to come,” said John Honeycutt, the program manager for the Space Launch System rocket, in a news conference after the launch on Wednesday.

The next Artemis mission, which is to take four astronauts on a journey around the moon but not to the surface, will launch no earlier than 2024. Artemis III, in which two astronauts will land near the moon’s south pole, is currently scheduled for 2025, though that date is very likely to slip further into the future.

In a report last year, the NASA inspector general estimated that by the time that Artemis III had returned from the moon, NASA would have spent $93 billion on the program and that each launch of the Space Launch System and Orion would cost more than $4 billion. The cost overruns were caused in part by technical problems, mismanagement and NASA’s changing plans and schedules. And like the old Saturn V, the pricey Space Launch System rocket is used just once before falling into the ocean.

By streamlining the manufacturing, “We’re hoping to get it to a cost of about $2 billion,” per launch, Sharon Cobb, the associate program manager at NASA for the Space Launch System, said during an interview in August.

By contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, while not as powerful as S.L.S., costs $90 million per launch. And SpaceX’s Starship, a giant next-generation rocket currently under development that is also central to NASA’s astronaut moon landing plans, is to be entirely reusable, and Mr. Musk has said, perhaps over-optimistically, a launch could eventually cost as little as $10 million.

For Artemis, NASA has taken a mix-and-match approach — a traditional program for the rocket and the crew capsule, and a commercial strategy for the lunar lander. NASA is purchasing from SpaceX, at a fixed price, a flight of Starship to serve as the lander for the Artemis III mission later in the decade. The Starship is to dock with Orion in orbit around the moon and take two astronauts to the surface near the lunar south pole.

The delays and cost overruns of S.L.S. and Orion highlight the shortcomings of how NASA has managed its programs, but Mr. Musk’s company, for all of the impressive technological leaps it has made so far, is also not guaranteed to solve all the development challenges of Starship as quickly as Mr. Musk might hope.

His company has been fantastically successful with its Falcon 9 rocket, following on NASA’s investment to take cargo and later astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The cargo contract provided a key infusion of money to Mr. Musk’s company, and bestowed NASA’s imprimatur of approval when SpaceX was still little known and largely unproven. It now dominates the satellite-launching business.

For NASA, this was a big win, too. Because NASA is just one of many customers for SpaceX, SpaceX can offer much lower costs.

Those successes, however, do not guarantee that Starship will also succeed. If SpaceX stumbles, NASA’s gamble on the company’s new spacecraft risks leaving the United States wasting its investment while still waiting for a moon lander for Artemis III.

Still, the sprawling expense of Artemis might be the cost of sustaining political support for a space program in a federal democracy, said Casey Dreier, the chief policy adviser for the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that promotes exploration of space. Even if Artemis is not the best or most efficient design, it provides jobs to the employees of NASA and aerospace companies across the country, he said. That provides continuing political support for the moon program.

“Congress has done nothing but add more money to Artemis every single year it’s been in existence,” Mr. Dreier said.

Politicians have so far faced little or no public outcry when voting to finance the Artemis missions. Even if it saved NASA money, the commercial approach could provoke greater opposition, feeding a perception that the agency has outsourced its space program to billionaires like Mr. Musk; Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon who started the rocket company Blue Origin; and Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic flies tourists on short suborbital flights.

Consider the ire of many people toward Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson last year when they made suborbital trips to space built by the companies started with their wealth. That Mr. Branson and Mr. Bezos did not rely on federal financing to start their space tourism businesses did not assuage the anger that space seemed to be turning into the playground of the superwealthy.

Thus, a decision to turn to companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin could set off criticism that NASA was just adding to the wealth of billionaires who would one day escape from worldly troubles to private space stations and off-world colonies.

“By aligning our space program with very famous, idiosyncratic individuals, that could potentially be the bigger political risk, to me,” Mr. Dreier said.

Commercial space advocates argue that history does not back up this dystopian view. Rather, they point to entrepreneurs a century ago who transformed aviation from a luxury available to only a few into safe, affordable transportation for almost everyone.

While private spaceflight proponents believe their approach will prevail, no one in Congress has yet pushed for canceling S.L.S. or Orion. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law by President Biden, calls for NASA to include the vehicles in plans to send astronauts to Mars and directs the agency to launch S.L.S. at least once a year.

NASA is currently negotiating with the rocket’s manufacturers for up to 20 more launches.

“I think the program itself is shaping up to be very politically sustainable,” Mr. Dreier said. “I challenge people to show me the public anger about the S.L.S. program and how it translates to political pressure to cancel it. And I just don’t see it.”

Who are the astronauts NASA will send to the moon?

There will be four more astronauts aboard the Artemis III mission. Two of them will land on the moon near the south pole. That landing is scheduled for 2025, but the dates for both missions are widely expected to slip.

As to who will be on Artemis II and Artemis III, NASA has not yet named names. All the space agency has said is that all active astronauts — NASA currently lists 43 of them — are eligible for those missions.

In addition, some “management astronauts” who are not currently eligible could return to active status, and astronaut candidates will also be eligible for the moon missions once they finish their training.

When the Trump administration announced that it was accelerating the moon program, aiming for astronauts landing in 2024, NASA said the Artemis III crew would include “the first woman and the next man” to walk on the moon.

Under the Biden administration, the phrasing has changed. NASA now refers to “the first woman and first person of color,” but more generally, to “Artemis missions” instead of specifically Artemis III.

As part of Canada’s agreement to participate in the Artemis program — Canada is contributing a robotic arm that will be part of the outpost orbiting the moon, known as Gateway — a Canadian astronaut will be part of the Artemis II crew.

An astronaut from the European Space Agency is to be part of the Artemis IV crew, which will the first to go to Gateway. That mission is to deliver a European-built habitation module to Gateway.

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There are more moon missions in the coming months.

It will soon be joined by Danuri, South Korea’s first robotic space probe to the moon, which launched in August and is scheduled to arrive in mid-December. In addition to helping South Korea’s space program study new technology, Danuri is carrying scientific instruments that will help American and Korean scientists study the moon’s ice.

There is one last moon launch scheduled for 2022. A private company, ispace of Japan, is aiming to successfully land the first commercial moon lander. Its M1 Lunar Lander recently shipped to Florida where it is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rocket as early as Nov. 22. Its cargo includes small rovers built by the space agencies of Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

Other private companies could follow ispace to the lunar surface in 2023. They include Intuitive Machines of Houston and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh. Those missions are part of a launch series sponsored by NASA known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services. With the program, NASA is trying to kick start private sector investments in lunar landings.

Two countries, India and Russia, have postponed their planned robotic moon landings this year. They could both try in 2023.

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The next very big launch: SpaceX’s Starship.

Starship will also — unlike any previous orbital rocket — be entirely reusable. That fact has the potential to cut the cost of sending payloads to orbit — less than $10 million to take 100 tons to space, Elon Musk, the company’s founder, has said.

While Mr. Musk first set out to build Starship with eventual trips to Mars in mind, NASA will use a version of the rocket to ferry astronauts from orbit around the moon to its surface. Beating out two competitors, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract for the mission, Artemis III.

The lunar mission will require about 10 Starship launches. First, SpaceX plans to launch a propellant depot version of Starship — think of it as a gas station — into orbit around Earth. Then a tanker Starship filled with liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants will sidle up to the propellant depot Starship. Once the tanker has transferred its load, it will return to Earth.

According to Mr. Musk, no more than eight Starship tanker flights are needed to fill up the propellant depot. Then, the lunar lander Starship will launch from Earth, meet up with the propellant depot and fill its tanks before departing for lunar orbit. There, it will wait for the arrival of four astronauts riding in NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

When Orion and Starship dock above the moon, two astronauts will move to Starship and head to the luanr south polar region, while the other two will stay in orbit on the Orion spacecraft.

Starship and the two moon-walking astronauts will spend about a week on the surface. They will then blast off to dock again with Orion, and Orion will take the astronauts back to Earth. SpaceX has not said what it plans do with the lunar lander Starship once its NASA mission is complete.

The moon landing is scheduled for 2025, but it is expected to be delayed. Before then, SpaceX is to conduct a demonstration landing of Starship, without any astronauts, on the moon. (That uncrewed demonstration is to show that Starship can land, but taking off again is not a requirement.)

Before SpaceX can even think about getting to the moon, it needs to get to low-Earth orbit. Short test flights of Starship prototypes went to high altitudes and exploded before one successfully landed undamaged in May 2021. The next test flight will go into space, with the booster trying a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship stage will try to set down in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii after flying to orbit.

In June, the Federal Aviation Administration granted environmental approval for the test flight from a site in South Texas, and detailed actions SpaceX must complete before launching. Spacecraft and booster tests are occurring on a regular basis, and in October, a NASA official told a NASA Advisory Council committee that SpaceX was aiming to launch Starship to orbit for the first time in early December.

Since then, Mr. Musk added to his portfolio of companies with the purchase of Twitter, which is now consuming much of his time and attention. CNBC reported this week that SpaceX has shaken up the leadership of its Texas Starship operation with Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, and Mark Juncosa, vice president of vehicle engineering, now overseeing the site.

On Monday, SpaceX conducted a test of the booster for Starship, firing 14 of the engines at once. Mr. Musk suggested on Twitter that the orbital test launch is not far off.

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When NASA’s moon rocket sprang a fuel leak, the launch team called in the ‘red crew.’

“All I can say is we were very excited,” Mr. Annis said in an interview on NASA TV after the launch. “I was ready to get up there and go.”

When a rocket is filled with propellants, human beings usually aim to be as far away as possible. A rocket in the best of circ*mstances is a controlled chemical reaction that lifts tons of material to space on a tower of fire. On its worst day, it is an explosive catastrophe that incinerates anything that gets too close.

So it was surprising on Tuesday during the launch countdown when Derrol Nail, the commentator on NASA’s live video feed, announced that real human beings were headed to the launchpad. Their goal was to fix parts on the Space Launch System, which was leaking hydrogen and threatening to ground the rocket — which by then had been packed full of huge quantities of explosive liquid hydrogen.

The red crew members and their minders drove up to the launchpad in a pair of white — not red — vehicles. Three characters in dark — again, not red — clothing ascended a part of the launch tower and got to work.

“We were very focused on what was happening up there,” Mr. Annis said in the post-launch interview. “It’s creaking, it’s making venting noises, it’s pretty scary.”

The precise work was unfamiliar to anyone who was not a rocket engineer. Mr. Nail described a need to “torque” something he described as “packing nuts.” On Twitter, NASA explained that bolts needed to be tightened because the valves they controlled might have been leaking.

While advanced technology is helpful, “there are also times when you’ve just got to put a wrench on a nut,” said Mike Bolger, the Exploration Ground Systems program manager at Kennedy Space Center, during a post-launch news conference on Wednesday.

Engineers in launch control then tested the valves, and whatever the red crew actually did worked. The leak had stopped. The loading of hydrogen into the rocket resumed.

While the red crew’s derring-do on Tuesday night was something, their work was not without precedent. A NASA spokeswoman highlighted the role such a group played in responding to a similar leak more than 50 years ago.

“We have sent a team of three technicians and a safety man to the pad and these technicians are now tightening bolts around the valve,” said a launch control commentator according to a NASA transcript from 1969. “Once the technicians depart, we will send hydrogen again through the system to assure that the leak has been corrected.”

The mission was Apollo 11, and the repair contributed to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins making it to the moon.

Hours after their brief visit to the launchpad, the Artemis I mission rocket was on its way to the moon, and the Red Team was on the ground, discussing its deeds with NASA’s on-air team. They highlighted that Mr. Cairns had been working on red crews for 37 years but it was his first time going to the launchpad in such a dangerous circ*mstance. Mr. Annis said during the interview that he had yet to fully appreciate his contribution to the mission.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s surreal to me, just insane.”

Kayla Barron, an astronaut who has served aboard the International Space Station and provided on-air commentary for NASA for Wednesday’s launch, said that the three men’s experience shows how space exploration is a “team sport.”

“I think you guys perfectly demonstrated that today,” she said. “None of us could have accomplished this on our own.”

Kenneth Chang contributed reporting.

Artemis II, Artemis III and beyond.

Mr. Nelson said that years ago, to save money, NASA decided to reuse some of the electronics equipment, known as avionics, from the Artemis I Orion capsule in the new Orion capsule for Artemis II. “It takes them two years to take the avionics out and redo them,” Mr. Nelson said, “which is very frustrating to me, but it is what it is.”

There will be four astronauts aboard Artemis II. Three will be from NASA, and one will be a Canadian, part of the agreement spelling out the Canadian Space Agency’s participation in the Artemis program. NASA has not yet announced who will fly on the mission.

The trajectory of Artemis II will be fairly simple. After launch, the second stage of the Space Launch System will push Orion into an elliptical orbit that loops as far out as 1,800 miles above Earth. That will give the astronauts time to see how Orion’s systems work.

Then, when Orion speeds around again, its engine will fire to send it toward the moon. For Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft will not enter orbit around the moon; it will just use the moon’s gravity to sling it back to Earth for a Pacific Ocean splashdown. The entire trip should take around 10 days.

The big event will be Artemis III, currently scheduled for no earlier than 2025.

During the Apollo moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s, the lunar lander was packed into the Saturn V rocket. The lander for Artemis III will be a version of a Starship rocket built by SpaceX. The lunar Starship will be launched separately Additional Starships would then launch to refill ithe propellant tanks of the lunar Starship before it left Earth orbit.

At the moon, the Starship lander will enter what is known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit, or N.R.H.O.

Halo orbits are influenced by the gravity of two bodies — in this case, the Earth and the moon — which helps to make the orbit highly stable, minimizing the amount of propellant needed to keep a spacecraft circling the moon. A spacecraft in this orbit also never passes behind the moon, where communications with Earth are cut off.

Once Starship is in orbit around the moon, the Space Launch System rocket will send four astronauts in an Orion capsule to the same near-rectilinear halo orbit. The Orion will dock with the Starship. Two of the astronauts will move to the Starship rocket, landing somewhere near the moon’s South Pole, while the other two astronauts will remain in orbit in Orion.

After about a week on the surface, the two moon-walking astronauts will blast off in Starship and rendezvous with Orion in orbit. Orion will then take the four astronauts back to Earth.

In August, NASA announced 13 potential landing sites.

The astronauts aboard Artemis IV will head to Gateway, a space station-like outpost that NASA will build in the same near-rectilinear halo orbit used for Artemis III. That mission will use a Space Launch System rocket with an upgraded second stage, providing enough power to take along Gateway’s habitat module.

Originally, NASA planned for Artemis IV to focus on construction of Gateway. But this year, it decided that the mission would also include a trip to the lunar surface. On Tuesday, NASA announced SpaceX would provide the lander for Artemis IV.

For Artemis V and later missions, the lunar lander will be docked at Gateway. Astronauts will arrive at the Gateway on Orion, then move to the lander for the journey to the surface.

NASA is currently in the middle of a competition for a different company to provide the lander for Artemis V.

Among the companies that may be bidding to build a competing lander are Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

NASA would then run a competition for future lunar landers similar to how it hired companies to take cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.

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Small explorers hitched a ride to space with Artemis I

The spacecraft, known as CubeSats for their standard size configurations, aim to investigate a variety of scientific questions. Some will even tag along to enter orbit around the moon.

For example, LunaH-Map, led by Craig Hardgrove, a professor of earth and space exploration at Arizona State University, will measure the distribution of hydrogen in the top three feet of the lunar surface around the South Pole region, where NASA plans to land astronauts in the coming years.

The hydrogen is mostly likely in the form of water molecules, which consist of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen.

LunaH will make more detailed maps than Lunar Prospector, a 1990s NASA mission, by passing within a dozen miles or so of the surface.

“It fit nicely with the idea of a CubeSat with a single instrument, with a single science goal,” Dr. Hardgrove said. “In order to do that, we had to get very, very close. And that’s something that is somewhat risky, and larger, more expensive spacecraft likely wouldn’t be willing to take that chance.”

Some of the other CubeSats will stay in deep space to test new technologies and measure radiation. One will head toward an asteroid.

“Artemis I provides a rare opportunity for these small experiments to reach deep space destinations,” Bhavya Lal, NASA’s associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy, said at a briefing earlier this month.

In recent years, CubeSats have become a popular way to send low-cost science experiments to space, with some even built by college and high school students. Almost all of the CubeSats to date have circled in low-Earth orbit. NASA also added two CubeSats to its InSight mission to Mars, relaying radio signals to Earth as InSight descended for landing in 2018.

For the Artemis I mission, the 10 CubeSats are installed on a ring that connects the rocket’s second stage to the Orion spacecraft on top. After the second stage pushes Orion onto a trajectory to the moon, Orion will separate and head on its own way. The second stage will also continue on a moonward path, then deploy the CubeSats.

The price tag for each of the CubeSats is far less than the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on larger, stand-alone spacecraft. The lower cost opens up science opportunities that might otherwise be too expensive to pursue, although with more limited capabilities and higher risks.

“When it comes to CubeSats,” Dr. Lal said, “failure is an option.”

Below are brief descriptions of the other nine CubeSats joining the Artemis I mission:

Moon

• Lunar IceCube (Morehead State University, Morehead, Ky.): Searching for water in all forms and other volatiles with an infrared spectrometer.

• LunIR (Lockheed Martin Corporation): Performing advanced infrared imaging of the lunar surface.

• OMOTENASHI (JAXA, the Japanese space agency): Developing the world’s smallest lunar lander and studying the lunar environment.

Radiation

• CuSP (Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio): Measuring particles and magnetic fields as a space weather station.

• BioSentinel (Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, Calif.): Using single-celled yeast to detect, measure and compare the impact of deep-space radiation on living organisms over a long period of time.

• EQUULEUS (University of Tokyo/JAXA): Imaging the Earth’s plasmasphere for a better understanding of the radiation environment around the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2.

Asteroid

• N.E.A. Scout (Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.): Traveling by solar sail to a near-Earth asteroid and taking pictures and other characterizations of its surface.

Technology Demonstrations

• ArgoMoon (A.S.I., the Italian Space Agency): Observing the interim cryogenic propulsion stage with advanced optics and software imaging system.

• Team Miles (Tampa, Fl.): Demonstrating propulsion using plasma thrusters and competing in NASA’s Deep Space Derby.

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How much does an Artemis launch cost?

“The Agency will face significant challenges to sustaining its Artemis program in its current configuration,” the report said.

Mr. Martin acknowledged that NASA is working to lower the cost.

At a news conference in March, John Honeycutt, the Space Launch System program manager at NASA, disputed the conclusions of the inspector general’s report. “I will certainly say that the S.L.S. rocket is not going to come at a cost of $4 billion a shot,” he said.

Mr. Honeycutt and other officials have steered clear of saying exactly how much they think S.L.S. would cost.

“We’re hoping to get it to a cost of about $2 billion for the entire launch,” Sharon Cobb, the associate program manager for the Space Launch System, said in an interview this summer.

Those numbers do not include the cost of developing the rocket and the capsule. According to numbers compiled by the Planetary Society, a space exploration advocacy nonprofit, NASA will have spent $23.8 billion on the Space Launch System between 2011, the year that development on the rocket started, and the end of this year.

Orion, the crew capsule where astronauts will sit during their trip to the moon, has cost more than $20 billion since 2006.

NASA, the Planetary Society reported, has also spent $5.7 billion on upgrading ground infrastructure like the crawler-transporter that carries the rocket to the launchpad, the Vehicle Assembly Building where the pieces of the rocket are stacked together, the launch control room and the mobile launcher tower.

NASA is currently negotiating to buy about 20 more Space Launch Systems rockets to be built through 2036 by Deep Space Transport, a joint venture of Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Boeing manufactured the gigantic core stage and an upgraded second stage that will be used beginning with Artemis IV. Northrop Grumman built the two side rocket boosters attached to the core stage, which are longer versions of those used by NASA’s space shuttles.

How NASA’s moon rocket compares with earlier launchers.

Then, NASA took a break from building massive rockets that could carry people to space. The space shuttles were powerful, but they were never intended to travel to the moon. After the shuttles retired, NASA turned to the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, which now carries people to the space station. It has become the workhorse of global spaceflight, but it’s nothing like the Saturn V.

The Space Launch System that was used for the Artemis I flight is the closest NASA has gotten to returning to the capability of Saturn V, part of the Apollo program. The goal is to send people easily on a course to the moon and perhaps other destinations. Although the model scheduled to launch on Wednesday cannot carry as much weight to the moon as the Apollo rocket did, future configurations of the Artemis rocket could one day overtake Saturn V.

All of these launchers may one day yield in launch ability to Starship, the fully reusable moon and Mars rocket that SpaceX is building in South Texas. But that vehicle has yet to travel to orbit, so NASA will make do with the Space Launch System for now.

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Why no astronauts are aboard this flight.

Launching to space is dangerous. Historically, NASA and other space agencies conduct a test flight of a new rocket without passengers before risking the lives of astronauts. During the 1960s, there were two uncrewed flights of the Saturn V before three astronauts boarded Apollo 8, which circled the moon 10 times on Christmas Eve in 1968.

While there are no humans aboard Orion for this journey to the moon, the capsule’s seats will not be empty. One of them will be filled with a full-size mannequin named Commander Moonikin Campos in honor of Arturo Campos, a Mexican American engineer who played a key role in bringing the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft safely back to Earth.

The moonikin, wearing the same spacesuit that astronauts will don, is equipped with two radiation sensors. Additional sensors behind its headrest and under its seat will record the vibrations and forces that astronauts will experience during the mission.

Two other seats will be occupied by model female torsos, named Zohar and Helga, that consist of 38 slices of plastic that mimic the density of bones, muscles and organs. Each torso contains 5,600 tiny crystal sensors to measure the amount of radiation absorbed during the mission. The torsos also contain battery-powered sensors that will measure radiation exposure moment by moment.

Zohar will be wearing a protective radiation vest made by an Israeli company; Helga will not. The experiment will test how well the vest is for shielding the greater amounts of radiation astronauts will be exposed to, especially observing the effects on radiation-sensitive organs, like the breasts and ovaries of women.

“What I like to say is that the vest is a gender equalizer,” said Oren Milstein, the chief executive of StemRad, which manufactured the vest. The vest should reduce the radiation exposure by half, Dr. Milstein said.

Another passenger is a small Snoopy, the Peanuts character, wearing an orange spacesuit with gloves, boots and a NASA patch. Snoopy will serve as the zero-gravity indicator, a tradition of bringing up an object — often a stuffed animal — that starts floating once the spacecraft has reached orbit.

And although there are no people aboard, there are living organisms. Orion will be carrying experiments to measure the effects of deep space radiation on yeast, algae, fungi and plant seeds.

While most test flights have been uncrewed, the debut journey of the space shuttle was a notable exception. Two astronauts flew Columbia during its first trip to orbit in 1981.

At the request of the Trump administration in 2017, NASA studied whether to put astronauts on the first Space Launch System mission, then known more blandly as Exploration Mission-1 instead of Artemis. NASA concluded that it would be feasible, but it would add between $600 million and $900 million to the cost, and the mission, which was scheduled for 2020, would be delayed.

Flying Artemis I without astronauts gives NASA more flexibility. The mission stretches into December — longer than the Orion spacecraft is designed to work in deep space. NASA will also be willing to continue with the mission if circ*mstances arose like a partial failure of a power or propulsion system. If there were astronauts aboard, mission managers would regard that as too risky.

During a news conference this summer, Mike Sarafin, the Artemis I mission manager, said NASA would proceed with the engine firing to send the spacecraft toward the moon “unless we’re sure that we’re going to lose the vehicle.”

As an example, if Orion’s solar array did not fully deploy, “We would proceed,” Mr. Sarafin said. “And that is something that we wouldn’t necessarily do on a crewed flight.”

What happens during the Artemis I flight?

Eight minutes into flight, the four engines of the core stage shut down. The stage then dropped away and disintegrated as it fell through the atmosphere, the debris splashing in the Pacific. The rocket’s second stage and the Orion capsule that will carry astronauts in the future were then on their own in space.

Fifty-one minutes after launch, the rocket’s second stage will fire for 22 seconds to raise the orbit. About one and a half hours after launch, the second stage fires again for about 18 minutes, in what it is called a trans-lunar injection. That is, the second stage will push Orion on a course to the moon. After that engine burn, Orion will separate from the second stage.

On Day 6, Orion will arrive at the moon, entering a few days after that into what is known as distant retrograde orbit — distant because it will be about 40,000 miles above the surface of the moon and retrograde because it will be orbiting in a direction opposite to the way the moon moves around the Earth. Because of gravitational interactions with both the Earth and moon, this is a very stable orbit. (Several years ago, NASA was considering dragging part of an asteroid to this orbit and sending astronauts up in Orion to study it.)

On Day 16, Orion will leave the distant retrograde orbit and start the return trip to Earth. Splashdown will be on Dec. 11, ending a 26-day mission.