#NASAs #rocket #launch #pad #journey #moon
NASA’s giant new SLS rocket reached its launch pad at Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, ahead of a planned flight to the moon in less than two weeks.
It will be the maiden voyage of the Artemis program – America’s quest to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
The Artemis 1 mission, an unmanned test flight, will include the first explosives on the Space Launch System rocket, which will be the most powerful in the world.
It will place the Orion crew capsule in orbit around the moon, and the spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth.
Starting in 2024, astronauts will travel aboard Orion for the same journey, and Americans won’t set foot on the moon again until the following year at the earliest.
The SLS rocket, which has been in development for more than a decade, is 98 meters (322 feet) tall.
On Wednesday, it stood at historic launch complex 39B, after a 10-hour overnight crawl from the assembly building.
“To all of us who are gazing up at the moon and dreaming of the day when humanity returns to the lunar surface, folks, we are here. We’re going back,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this month.
The Orion capsule will fly to the Moon and 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) beyond – further than any previous manned spacecraft.
Coming back through Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 km/h (25,000 mph), Orion’s heat shield must withstand a temperature half that of the Sun’s surface.
The launch of the Artemis 1 mission is scheduled for August 29 at 8:33 a.m. (1233 GMT). In case it has to be postponed due to bad weather, the backup dates are September 2nd and 5th.
After the 42-day journey, the capsule is scheduled to land in the Pacific and be picked up by a US Navy ship.
In 2024, an Artemis 2 mission is expected to take astronauts into lunar orbit without landing on it. That honor is reserved for Artemis 3, a mission scheduled for no earlier than 2025.
The last time humans set foot on the moon was in 1972 on the Apollo 17 mission.
While the Apollo program included only white male astronauts, NASA says the Artemis missions will land the first woman and first colored person on the moon.
The hope is to use the moon as a base to develop technology to send humans to Mars.
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