'It's a really cool feeling right now': Artemis team prepare for launch

The astronauts being sent to the Moon for the first time in 50 years are in quarantine as they prepare for lift off this week.

Nasa say there is an 80% chance of good weather conditions to allow the launch to take place on Wednesday night.

One of the astronauts, Jeremy Hansen said: "It's a really cool feeling right now.

"We're going to do something very real, very challenging, and that's what will make it inspiring."

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The mission - which will be the first human trip around the Moon since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s - is aiming for an early April launch.

It has been held up due to a rocket fuel leak in February and a helium leak in March.

As well as sorting out technical issues, mission planners also have to wait until the Moon is in the right part of its orbit before launch.

This creates a pattern of roughly one week at the start of each month when the rocket can be pointed in the right direction.

Artemis II will take four astronauts - NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency - on a 10-day flight around the Moon.

They are currently in quarantine which means they have to limit their exposure to others to make sure they don't pick up an illnesses that could delay the mission.

The astronauts say they are ready to go but if the weather isn't ideal or the rocket isn't ready to go, the mission will be postponed again and they're ready for that too.

During a press conference Reid Wiseman said: "This is the first time we're going to try this.

"This is the first time we're loading humans on board and I will tell you the four of us are ready to go, the team is ready to go, and the vehicle is ready to go but for not one second do we have an expectation that we are going.

"We will go when this vehicle tells us it's ready and when the team says it's ready to go. So we might go out to the pad and we might have to try again a few more times and we are 100% ready for that."

Responding to a question about what the team were most looking forward to, Christina Koch spoke about "the flyby by the Moon. What will it actually look like through our eyes, through the windows...that's something we're all really looking forward to."

Speaking about why they were going to the Moon, she continued to say:

"We have the opportunity to answer the question: 'Are we alone?' And the fact is, answering that question starts at the Moon.

"The Moon is a witness to our entire solar system's formation and it's a stepping stone to Mars where we might have the most likelihood of finding evidence of past life."

Reid Wiseman added: "I think at the end of the day humanity's call is to go and explore and go do these things and then to share them with the world and to motivate.

"We might motivate 10 kids to go do something great, we might motivate one kid to go do something great and that's a success to me."