Nasa prepares for Artemis lunar rocket launch today

Ground teams at Kennedy Space Center prepared on Tuesday for a third try at launching Nasa’s towering, next-generation moon rocket, the debut flight of the US space agency’s Artemis lunar program, 50 years after Apollo’s last moon mission. Named for the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2025.The Space Launch System rocket is due to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:34am on Wednesday to send its Orion capsule on a 25-day voyage around the moon and back without astronauts aboard. Nasa crews are eager for success after 10 weeks beset by engineering difficulties, two hurricanes and two trips from the spacecraft’s hangar to its launch pad. Two previous launch attempts, on August 29 and September 3, were aborted because of fuel line leaks and other technical problems that Nasa has since resolved.