The rocket will carry the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon.
Washington:
NASA’s giant new SLS rocket arrived at its launchpad in Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, less than two weeks ahead of a planned flight to the Moon.
It will be the first 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 be the first detonation of a Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful in the world.
It will carry the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon, and the spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth.
From 2024, astronauts will travel on Orion for the same journey, and next year, at the earliest, Americans will once again set foot on the Moon.
The SLS rocket, in development for more than a decade, is 98 m (322 ft) tall.
It stood at the historic Launch Complex 39B on Wednesday after 10 hours of crawling through the assembly building overnight.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this month, “For all of us who look to the Moon, dreaming of the day humans return to the lunar surface, guys, here we are. We’re going back.” “
The Orion capsule will fly 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) to the Moon and beyond – far ahead of any previous crewed spacecraft.
On its way back through Earth’s atmosphere, traveling at 40,000 kph (25,000 mph), Orion’s thermal shield would encounter a temperature that is half that of the Sun’s surface.
Liftoff for the Artemis 1 mission is scheduled for August 29 at 8:33 a.m. (1233 GMT). If it has to be postponed due to bad weather, the backup dates are 2 and 5 September.
After a 42-day voyage, the capsule must fall into the Pacific Ocean and be picked up by a US Navy vessel.
In 2024, an Artemis 2 mission is scheduled to take astronauts to orbit the Moon, but without landing on it. That honor is reserved for Artemis 3, a mission scheduled for 2025 at the earliest.
People last stepped on the Moon in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission.
While there were only white male astronauts in the Apollo program, NASA says the Artemis mission will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon.
The hope is to use the Moon as a platform for developing technologies to send humans to Mars.
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