NASA's New Moon rocket arrived at the launch pad Wednesday before its maiden flight in less than two weeks.
The 322-foot rocket emerged from a huge hangar late Tuesday night, many of them unborn when NASA sent astronauts to the moon. It drew crowds of Kennedy Space Center workers half a century ago. It took nearly 10 hours for the rocket to travel four miles to the launch pad and lift off at sunrise.
NASA is aiming for his Aug. 29 liftoff for lunar test flights. No one is inside the crew capsule at the top of the rocket, only his three mannequins with sensors that measure radiation and vibrations.
before returning to the water landing. The entire flight should last 6 weeks.
This flight is the first moonshot forNASA's Artemis program. The space agency aims to orbit the moon with astronauts within two years and land a crew on the moon as early as 2025 . This has come much later than NASA predicted when he launched the program more than a decade ago, and the space shuttle fleet has retired. Years of delays added billions of dollars in costs.
"We will be launching the first rocket designed for deep space since 1972," NASA Rocket Program Manager John Honeycutt recently said.
NASA's new SLS Moon rocket, which stands for Space Launch System, is 41 feet shorter than the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program half a century ago. But it's more powerful, using a core stage and twin strap-on boosters, similar to those used on the Space Shuttle. It's like looking back at the Saturn V," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters earlier this month. "But it's a whole different, new, highly sophisticated, more sophisticated rocket and spacecraft."[36][37]In the Apollo program he had 24 astronauts go to the Moon, and of them he 12 people landed on the moon from his 1969 to his 1972. The space agency seeks a more diverse team and a more sustained effort under Artemis, named after Apollo's mythical twin sister.
"I want to emphasize that this is a test flight," said Nelson. "It's just the beginning."
This was his third flight to the rocket's pad. April's countdown tests were marred by fuel leaks and other equipment troubles, forcing NASA to return the rocket to its hangar for repairs. dress rehearsal } was repeated on his June pad with improved results.
