Man's adventure to the moon begins again. Nasa launched the SLS carrier rocket, the most powerful ever built, with the Orion spacecraft, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. This is the first mission of the Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon, so far only dummies are on board. 

With Artemis 1, NASA will launch the Orion capsule, which will remain in space for about 26 days, during which time the first tests will be conducted around the Moon. Also as part of the program is an Italian mini-satellite, ArgoMoon, made by Argotech, a company in Turin, Piedmont. The cubesat, which measures 24x36x12 centimeters, will be in operation for about six months, collecting valuable images and data about the lunar surface.

ArgoMoon is the only European satellite aboard the mission. It weighs just under 14 kilograms and is very similar to LICIACube, another Italian satellite that successfully completed the main part of its mission as part of the Dart mission. and was able to take more than 600 photographs of the impact, 11 million kilometers away from Earth, at a speed of nearly 7 kilometers per second.

With the Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore extended portions of Earth's only natural satellite. The ultimate goal of the Artemis program will also be to install a functioning base of operations on the Moon, which can support long-duration missions and at the same time provide the testing ground for technologies to be used on Mars. The goal, then, is to build a lasting presence on the Moon and draw lessons learned to prepare for a future trip to Mars in the 2030s.