NASA's giant U.S. moon rocket Artemis emerges for debut launch

The lunar test flight is scheduled to lift off on August 29 after several days earlier this year

August 17, 2022 10:32 am | Updated 02:48 pm IST

The NASA Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard leaves the Vehicle Assembly Building moving slowly to pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022.

The NASA Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard leaves the Vehicle Assembly Building moving slowly to pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. | Photo Credit: AP

NASA's gigantic Space Launch System moon rocket, topped with an uncrewed astronaut capsule, began an hours-long crawl to its launchpad Tuesday night ahead of the behemoth's debut test flight this month.

(Sign up to our Technology newsletter, Today’s Cache, for insights on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, business and policy. Click here to subscribe for free.)

The 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket is scheduled to embark on its first mission to space - without any humans - on August 29. It will be a crucial, long-delayed demonstration trip to the moon for NASA's Artemis program, the United States' multibillion-dollar effort to return humans to the lunar surface as practice for future missions to Mars.

The Space Launch System, whose development during the past decade has been led by Boeing Co, emerged from its assembly building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida about 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) on Tuesday and began a four-mile (6-kilometer) trek to its launchpad.

Moving less than 1mph (1.6kph), the rollout will take roughly 11 hours.

Sitting atop the rocket is NASA's Orion astronaut capsule, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. It is designed to separate from the rocket in space, ferry humans toward the moon and rendezvous with a separate spacecraft that will take astronauts to the lunar surface.

For the August 29 mission, called Artemis 1, the Orion capsule will launch atop the Space Launch System without any humans and orbit the moon before returning to Earth for an ocean splashdown 42 days later.

If bad launch weather or a minor technical issue triggers a delay on August 29, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has backup launch dates on September 2 and September 5.

Top News Today

Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.