NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket reaches the launch pad

NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket reaches the launch pad

The NASA Artemis 1 rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard strikes slowly on an 11 hour journey to a launch pad on the Kennedy Area Heart in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Thursday, March 17, 2022.

John Raoux/AP

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John Raoux/AP

The NASA Artemis 1 rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard strikes slowly on an 11 hour journey to a launch pad on the Kennedy Area Heart in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Thursday, March 17, 2022.

John Raoux/AP

For the primary time in practically 50 years, a moon rocket has made it to a launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart.

The Artemis 1 rocket reached Launch Complicated 39B early Friday morning, touring in a single day to make the 4-mile journey from the Car Meeting Constructing to the pad.

Whereas that is a brief distance in comparison with the journey to the moon — which lies round a quarter-million miles away — the journey marked a key milestone in NASA’s subsequent chapter of deep area exploration.

“It is an enormous second,” says NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.

The Apollo program of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and different People to the lunar floor. Now, the Artemis program —named after Apollo’s twin sister, the goddess of the moon in Greek delusion — may quickly carry astronauts again to our rocky neighbor after a half-century absence.

Anchoring this system’s first mission is the Area Launch System, a 5-million-pound rocket that stands greater than 300 toes tall and is designed to hold NASA’s Orion capsule, a spacecraft that might sooner or later ferry people to the moon and again.

However this mission, dubbed Artemis I, will carry no crew. As an alternative, it would check the rocket and spacecraft’s capabilities for carrying astronauts on the more-than-250,000-mile journey to the moon.

And the mission is not prepared to go away the planet simply but.

First, Artemis I’ll undergo what’s known as a moist costume rehearsal.

“We deal with it like an actual countdown,” says NASA’s Carlos Garcia-Galan. Crews at Kennedy Area Heart will apply fueling the automobile and counting all the way down to liftoff. “We’re stopping wanting really launching the factor.”

The moist costume rehearsal is about to start April 3 and Artemis engineers and technicians will probably be preserving a watchful eye out for any kinks or points.

“It’ll be a terrific alternative to see the built-in programs, if every little thing works on the launch pad, and ensure every little thing’s good,” says Orion engineer Chelsea Partridge. “If something comes up, it provides us the possibility to repair and replace no matter must be achieved after which really get able to launch for actual.”

If all goes nicely on the pad, the rocket will make its manner again to NASA’s Car Meeting Constructing one final time earlier than repeating the 4-mile journey, then launching to the moon as early as June.

Following a profitable Artemis I mission, a crew of astronauts will launch on Artemis II on a mission across the moon and again, adopted by Artemis III — which incorporates touchdown on the lunar floor, due to a brand new spacecraft designed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

NASA hasn’t named the crew simply but, however says a girl and particular person of coloration will probably be a part of Artemis III. Astronaut Randy Bresnik says it will not be arduous to search out astronauts keen to make the journey.

“Inform you what — each single particular person in a blue flight go well with is able to go and volunteer for that Artemis to flight,” Bresnik says.

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