As NASA prepares for its next mission to the moon, one Atlanta university is drawing attention for its growing role in space exploration.

NASA begun fueling its moon rocket Wednesday for humanity’s first lunar trip in more than half a century, aiming for an evening liftoff with four astronauts. Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch.

Helping the astronauts of Artemis II speak to the folks on Earth is the Deep Space Network, operated out of Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida — The US military has always been part of NASA’s human spaceflight program. The first astronauts were nearly all military pilots, and two of the four crew members set to fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission were Navy test pilots before joining the astronaut corps.

December 11, 1998—launch day for the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) and the accompanying Polar Lander, both of which were part of a larger NASA initiative known as Mars Surveyor ’98. NASA had commissioned Lockheed Martin to design and build the MCO, which was was destined to gather data on Martian weather while communicating with the Polar Lander.

Artemis II is scheduled to blast off this week, but a former astronaut and heat-shield expert has major concerns.

Artemis II will test NASA’s crew capabilities in deep space and gather more information that could ultimately help send astronauts to Mars.

Artemis is NASA’s plan to return people to the Moon with the goal of staying. Unlike the short Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, it consists of increasingly complex missio