After technical problems halted its first launch attempt, NASA will try again on Saturday to launch its new 30-story rocket and send its unmanned test capsule to the moon.

If the massive Space Launch System (SLS) successfully lifts off, it will not only be impressive, but also historic for NASA, as it will mark the first of their Artemis program to return to the Moon, fifty years after the last Apollo Mission.

Launch is scheduled for 2:17 p.m. local time (1817 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with a possible two-hour delay if necessary.

“Our team is ready,” Jeremy Parsons, associate director of exploration ground systems at Kennedy Space Center, said Friday.

“They’re getting better with every try and actually did an excellent job on start countdown number one… I think if the conditions are in line with the weather and the hardware then we’ll definitely go.”

Although the area around the launch site will be closed to the public, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to gather on the nearby beaches to see – and hear – the most powerful vehicle NASA has ever launched into space , rises into space.

NASA’s first launch attempt on Monday was halted after engineers discovered a fuel leak and a sensor showed one of the rocket’s four main engines was overheating.

Both issues have since been resolved, and the weather appears to be cooperating: the US Space Force forecasts a 60 percent chance of favorable weather at the scheduled launch time, increasing to 80 percent later in the launch window.

If NASA has to resign again on Saturday, there are alternatives on Monday or Tuesday. After that, the next launch window is possible on September 19 at the earliest due to the position of the moon.

The purpose of the Artemis-1 mission is to verify whether the Orion capsule, which sits on the SLS rocket, can be safe for astronauts in the future.

Mannequins equipped with sensors represent the astronauts on the mission and record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

It will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the moon, flying about 100 kilometers at its closest approach. The capsule will fire its engines to enter a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a spacecraft designed to carry people.

The journey is expected to last around six weeks and one of its main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.

On its return to Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield must withstand speeds of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) – about half the temperature of the sun.

Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first lunar missions were named.

Unlike the Apollo missions, which sent only white men to the moon between 1969 and 1972, Artemis missions will be the first person of color and the first woman to set foot on the lunar surface.

Fittingly, NASA’s first female launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, will give the final “go” for the launch on Saturday.

A successful Artemis 1 mission will be a great relief to the US space agency after years of delays and cost overruns.

A government review estimates the program’s cost will grow to $93 billion by 2025, with each of the first four missions bringing in a whopping $4.1 billion per launch.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the moon without landing on its surface.

The crew of Artemis 3 is not expected to land on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, later missions envisage a lunar space station and a sustained presence on the lunar surface.

According to NASA chief Bill Nelson, a crewed voyage to the Red Planet aboard Orion could be made by the late 2030s, which would take several years.