Nasa’s long-awaited return to the Moon could begin as soon as 29 August, and the excitement was hard to miss even in the sober voices of Nasa officials and engineers during a press conference Wednesday.

“The Saturn five took us to the moon, half a century ago,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said. “Now, as we embark on the first Artemis test flight, we recall this agency’s storied past, but our eyes are focused not on the immediate future, but out there.”

Artemis is Nasa’s new Moon program, and the upcoming flight on 29 August is dubbed Artemis I. It will be an uncrewed test flight to test Nasa’s huge Moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, and the Orion spacecraft, which will fly to, around, and beyond the Moon before returning to Earth 42 days later.

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It’s a mission that will pave the way for Artemis II in the spring of 2023, a crewed lunar flyby, and Artemis III in 2025, which will fairly land humans on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Read more: Independent