NASA is scheduled to launch the Artemis I mission to the moon Monday, and the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University will give visitors a special way to watch.
There won’t be a crew aboard the spacecraft, but Abrams Planetarium Director Shannon Schmoll describes the mission as the first step towards sending astronauts back to the moon. The last lunar mission, Apollo 17, was in 1972.
The planetarium will project a live stream of the launch on its dome, with doors opening at 8 a.m. The launch is set for between 8:33 and 10:33 a.m.
Schmoll says the images will come from a production company that makes documentaries and planetarium programs.
They worked with NASA in order to put, I think it’s seven cameras around the launch site and one on the rocket itself, that’ll live stream to a page that we have access to," she said.
"From there, we do our planetarium magic and we can get it up on the dome.”
Schmoll says this is the first mission using a NASA rocket since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.
"It’s the heaviest rocket that we’ve launched, and so it has a much bigger payload.”
In recent years, NASA has used rockets from the private company SpaceX to get astronauts into space.
Artemis II is scheduled to take a crew around the moon in 2024, and Artemis III will land a crew on the lunar surface in 2025.
