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This post and podcast are not, in any way, shape or form, affiliated with, nor endorsed by, NASA. (Photo courtesy of NASA, and used with permission.) In a matter of weeks, NASA's Artemis I will mark a new beginning in space exploration. This historic flight is the first phase of the Artemis program's goal: returning humans to the Moon. Matt Wittal is Mission Design and Planetary Science at NASA. As he explained in our 2019 interview, unmanned Artemis I is the first of three scheduled missions in the Artemis program. The world's most powerful rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System), will launch the spacecraft, Orion. Initially, Orion will orbit the Earth. Then, off to the moon--and it its lunar orbit, Orion will travel further than any previous spacecraft. The mission objectives, as explained on NASA's website: to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment; and to ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown, and recovery prior to Artemis II, which will be the first f