The Artemis program is NASA's plan to return humans to the Moon as a stepping stone for an eventual voyage to Mars.

Twelve men walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 and one of the goals of Artemis is to put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface.

The first test flight of an uncrewed Artemis rocket is to take place on Monday.

The name Artemis was chosen to echo that of the Apollo program.

Artemis, in Greek mythology, was the twin sister of Apollo and a goddess associated with the Moon.

Here is an overview of the Artemis program:

Artemis 1: test flight

Artemis 1 is a test flight of the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket and the Orion crew capsule that sits on top.

Blastoff is scheduled for 8:33 am (1233 GMT) on Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Seeing a rocket blast off to the Moon is "a once-in-a-lifetime thing to experience," says Joanne Bostandji.

The 45-year-old has traveled all the way from northern England to Florida with her husband and two children for a space-themed vacation, and they're prepared to make sure they don't miss a second of the action as NASA's newest and most powerful rocket is scheduled to launch for the first time Monday.

"The plan is to drive very early in the morning and get a spot" on Cocoa Beach, she said, not far from the Kennedy Space Center.

"I know it's going be from a far distance, but I still think it's going be a sight to behold," Bostandji told AFP as the family waited to enter a park dedicated to space exploration.

The first phase of NASA's Artemis mission, an uncrewed test flight around the moon, was scheduled to launch this Monday (29 August 2022). The third phase, scheduled for 2025, will see humans land on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

Professor Jan-Peter Muller and Ph.D. student Alfiah Putri (both UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory) were commissioned by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to create a 3D model and image of a possible landing site known as Aristarchus—a crater 40km wide and nearly 2.7km deep that was originally selected as the landing site for the canceled Apollo 18 mission.

The team used a photogrammetry technique they pioneered to derive a detailed 3D model, at a resolution of one meter, from a series of 14 stereo images (where pictures are taken of the same scene at slightly different angles).

Professor Muller says that "better quality maps and models of the moon's surface are important to minimize risks and maximize the safety of astronauts. Our techniques, developed over decades, provide the most accurate images and models currently possible.

An experiment prepared by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) will launch as part of NASA's scheduled Artemis I mission to orbit the moon Aug. 29.

The NRL experiment will use samples of fungi to investigate effects of the deep space radiation environment outside of Earth's protective magnetosphere.

How will we grow food in space? That's one question Michigan State University's Federica Brandizzi has been particularly interested in solving.

Brandizzi, an MSU Foundation Professor in the College of Natural Science and the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, will be sending seeds on the Artemis I mission to better understand how to grow food during space travel.

"This is really about understanding how we can establish and sustain life outside of this planet," Brandizzi said. "We need to have plants that can survive long-term space travel for generations."

But plants grow differently in space than they do on Earth. Over the past few decades, scientists have been working to compensate for those changes by getting a better understanding of plant biology and development away from our home planet.

From previous experiments, scientists have learned that space flight affects organisms' building blocks like amino acids that keep seedlings strong on Earth. The same amino acids would also be nutritious for people who eat the plants.

So Brandizzi's lab has selected seeds that are enriched with those amino acids and is sending those into space along with regular seeds.

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, NASA is again aiming for the moon. The Artemis I mission will blast off Monday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for deep-space exploration and demonstrate our commitment to extend human existence to the moon, and on to Mars," Stephanie Schierholz, NASA press secretary, said at a briefing this month.

Monday's launch will be the first in a series of "increasingly complex" missions that will culminate with a manned moon landing planned for 2025. NASA has said the Artemis missions will include the first woman and first person of color to land on the moon.

NASA workers have spent the past several days staging the massive rocket on its pad and preparing it for launch. The mission will take 42 days, three hours and 20 minutes to complete, according to NASA. The Orion spacecraft is set for splashdown near Baja, California, after it returns from orbiting the moon on Oct. 10.

NASA Artemis I launch schedule