NASA's Artemis 1 mission, scheduled to take off on Monday, is a 42-day voyage beyond the far side of the Moon and back.

The meticulously choreographed uncrewed flight should yield spectacular images as well as valuable scientific data.

Blastoff

The giant Space Launch System rocket will make its maiden flight from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Its four RS-25 engines, with two white boosters on either side, will produce 8.8 million pounds (39 meganewtons) of thrust—15 percent more than the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket.

After two minutes, the thrusters will fall back into the Atlantic Ocean.

After eight minutes, the core stage, orange in color, will fall away in turn, leaving the Orion crew capsule attached to the interim cryogenic propulsion stage.

With a week to go before the Artemis I rocket has its first shot at the moon, NASA managers said the hardware is good to go.

The massive Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft atop the mobile launcher rolled out to Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-B last week ahead of the first launch window that opens at 8:33 a.m. next Monday.

"We are go for launch," said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana after teams completed the flight readiness review Monday. "This day has been a long time coming. ... I want to put this in perspective. This is a test flight. It's not without risk. We have analyzed the risk as best we can and we have mitigated as best we can."

The rocket launch expected to bring between 100,000 and 200,000 spectators to the Space Coast will if successful become the most powerful rocket to ever lift off from Earth. The core stage combined with two solid rocket boosters produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust besting the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo missions to the moon.

The Saturn V carried man to the moon and remains the most powerful rocket to successfully launch to orbit. It captures the imagination—but sometimes, it might capture a bit too much imagination. Abundant internet claims about the acoustic power of the rocket suggest that it melted concrete and lit grass on fire over a mile away.

Such ideas are undeniably false. In The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, researchers from Brigham Young University used a physics-based model to estimate the acoustic levels of the Saturn V. They obtained a value of 203 decibels, which matched the very limited data from the 1960s.

To put that number into perspective, commercial jet engines range from around 120 to 160 decibels.

"Decibels are logarithmic, so every 10 decibels is an order of magnitude increase," said author Kent L.