Officials at NASA are no doubt both excited and nervous as the agency gets ready for the debut of its most powerful rocket ever, dubbed the Mega Moon rocket.
The Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s was a towering highlight of the Space Age, delivering astronauts experiments, and moon buggies to our natural satellite.
The workhorse of the Artemis program is the RS-25 rocket engines, four of which sit at the bottom of the Mega Moon rocket’s core stage.
The RS-25 was originally used to launch the space shuttle, and NASA currently has 16 of them on hand to use for different SLS missions.
One of NASA's stated goals with its Artemis program is to land "the first woman and first person of color on the moon."
The SLS Orion crew capsule is capable of taking four astronauts on joints to space, and it is expected to do so for the first time with the Artemis II mission.
The Mega Moon rocket will also set the stage for further exploration of Mars,