NASA says the launch of its massive new Moon rocket next Monday is “on!”
After reviewing the flight preparation late on Monday (August 22), the space agency concluded that there were no significant technical obstacles. So, a capsule dubbed Orion will be sent on an orbital mission around the Moon by the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
Read out below to find more details.
Artemis I is Ready For the Lunar Mission
NASA confirmed the new Artemis I mission for the following Monday (August 29). The Orion spacecraft will go around the Moon thanks to the powerful SLS rocket. How great! And if all goes according to plan, astronauts will board the spacecraft for the next flights. This time, however, it’s uncrewed.
On Monday, beginning at 8:33 local time, the spacecraft was given a two-hour window to leave Earth (12:33 GMT, 13:33 BST). The Florida Kennedy Space Center will launch the SLS.
With a force of 39.1 meganewtons, that’s about 8.8 million pounds, the rocket will be the most powerful to launch from Kennedy! That is more than 20 % more than the previous space shuttle system and over 15 % more than the Saturn V rockets used for the Apollo missions. Quite spectacular, right?
Furthermore, NASA foresees a trip back to the Moon to be ready for a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s or so. The launch will also be a significant occasion for the space agency since, in December, it’ll mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17.
That was the final mission to put a person on the Moon!
Keith Cowing is the editor of the NASA Watch website, which covers NASA news. He released a statement expressing his excitement:
We do things differently, everything is instant, everything’s going to be in HD… It’s going to be exciting and noisy, but at the end of the day eventually we’re going to be sending humans to walk on another world and again hopefully maybe this time it’ll be a global effort, not two countries competing with each other.