More On: Artemis test flight
On the Artemis test flight, the head of NASA says, 'Nothing will go as planned'
It's not the best thing you could say about NASA.
Sunday, as NASA got ready to launch the unmanned moon rocket Artemis I on Monday, the head of the space agency said that the test flight might not go as planned.
"During a test flight, you can expect that not everything will go as planned. Bill Nelson, who is in charge of NASA, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that this was part of a test flight.
"That's part of making things like airplanes, for example. He said, "That's why you have a test pilot."
Nelson added, "But we're pretty sure about this."
The comments by Nelson come at a very important time for the space agency. If the moon rocket's six-week trip into lunar orbit goes well, astronauts might be able to go back to the moon in a few years.
He said of the men on the moon, "This time we're going back, we're going to live there, and we're going to learn there."
"We're going to come up with new technologies so that we can send people to Mars."
Nelson said that the goal is to find ways for people to live on other planets.
Nelson said, "They could be floating worlds or the surface of Mars." "But this is just part of our effort to reach out into the universe and find out what's there."
Three test dummies will be strapped in for the Artemis I mission. Even though lightning has struck the launch pad several times, NASA is still going ahead with the launch on Monday.
"This is just a test flight. Nelson told host Chuck Todd, "We test it and put a lot of pressure on it." "We do things with this rocket and this spaceship that we would never do with a human crew.
"The flight's main goal is to test the heat shield, which can't be done in a lab. So the test is a success if the heat shield survives and does what it is supposed to do.
Nelson, a former US senator from Florida, said that NASA's cooperation with Russia at the International Space Station "doesn't miss a beat," even though Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was "inexcusable." This includes continuing crew exchanges.
"Despite the terrible things going on in Ukraine, the professionalism, the relationship between the astronauts and the cosmonauts on board the International Space Station, and our two mission controls, one in Houston and one in Moscow, don't miss a beat," Nelson said.
In response to the race between NASA and China to get to the south pole of the moon first, Nelson said that he doesn't want the Chinese to get there first and then claim the area as their own.
"I've been saying for a long time that we're in a space race. "We want to get to the south pole of the moon, where we think there is water and where we think there are resources," said Nelson.
"Where there's water, there's fuel for rockets. And we don't want China to show up out of the blue and say, "This is our land and no one else's."
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