Artemis 1 prepares to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center

Artemis 1 is scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday.

The test flight will be crewless and is a part of NASA’s Artemis Program.

Astronaut Stanley Love spoke with CBS News and is optimistic about what this flight can show scientists.

“A single step that starts the journey of 1,000 miles. So, we are going to launch a brand-new heavy-lift rocket. With more liftoff thrust than the United States has ever produced, even more than the Saturn 5, we’ve got a brand new capsule that can sustain a crew of four for 21 days on flights to the moon, around the moon and beyond the moon; we’re going to test all that out,” Love said.

No one will be inside the crew capsule on this 322-foot rocket.

Instead, mannequins will be swarming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration. The unpiloted Orion crew capsule is going on a 42-day trip around the moon.

FGCU Professor Dr. Derek Buzasi once worked for NASA in the astrophysics division and on the Hubble telescope.

“It’s always the humans are the most precious cargo, right? So we want to make sure everything works. It’s a long trip. And you know, there’s no roadside assistance. So you really want to make sure that everything works, the way that you think it’s going to work. And to be fair, the Artemis program has had various problems along the way. So, you know, we really want to be sure that everything’s working well,” Buzasi said.

The capsule will fly in a distant orbit for a couple of weeks, before heading back for a splashdown in the pacific.

“The main point of the flight doesn’t happen until the last few minutes. When we come plunging back into the earth’s atmosphere after falling from the moon at something like 24,000 miles an hour 5000 degrees on that heat shield, we hope it stays nice and cool on the other side of that heat shield where we’re gonna put the people one day,” Love said.

Artemis is much more technologically advanced than what we have seen with Apollo the last time we sent people to the moon which ended in the early 70s.

“What has really changed as the computers the Apollo flight computer I have heard at about the same memory and processing power as the fob on your car key. Think about that for a minute we flew to the moon with that the computers are far better now the cameras are better now sensors are better now our navigation will be far more precise. We’ll have video throughout the whole flight rather than a grainy tv camera setup after the fact. So the flow of information has gotten unrecognizable to the 1960s,” Love said.

The agency has had time to fine tune their work to make getting to the moon as easy as possible.

“Everyone sort of dreams about you know, going to the moon that hasn’t changed or it’s not even so much at the moon it’s another celestial body something other than the earth. And, you know, a lot of people who saw Apollo or grew up with Apollo, you know, aren’t either aren’t around anymore or the younger generations, you know, read know that is history, but not as something personal. And so this is now you know, it’s going to be there. It’s going to be there Apollo only, you know, bigger and better. And we hope to lead on to two more landings and more permanent presence in a way that Apollo sort of promised but never was able to deliver on,” Busazi said.

By 2024, the goal is to take the first woman and first person of color to the moon. Then to send people to work in lunar orbit and on the moon’s surface.