NASA’s massive new rocket on Thursday began its first journey to a launchpad ahead of a battery of tests that would clear it to blast off to the moon this summer.
It left the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at about 5:47pm and began an 11-hour journey on a crawler-transporter to the hallowed Launch Complex 39B, 6.5km away.
About 10,000 people had gathered to watch the event.
Photo: Reuters
With the Orion crew capsule fixed on top, the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 stands 98m high — taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York, but a little smaller than the 110m Saturn V rockets that powered the Apollo missions to the moon.
Despite this, it would produce 39.1 meganewtons of thrust, 15 percent more than the Saturn V, meaning that it is expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket at the time it begins operating.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s most powerful rocket ever right here,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the crowd. “We imagine, we build, we never stop pushing the envelope of what is possible.”
A symbol of US space ambition, it also comes with a hefty price tag of US$4.1 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin told the US Congress earlier this month.
After reaching the launchpad, two more weeks of checks are scheduled before what is known as the “wet dress rehearsal.”
The SLS team is to load more than 3.2 million liters of cryogenic propellant into the rocket and practice every phase of launch countdown, stopping 10 seconds before blast off.
NASA is targeting May as the earliest window for Artemis-1, an uncrewed lunar mission that would be the first integrated flight for the SLS and Orion.
The SLS would first place Orion into a low Earth orbit, and then, using its upper stage, perform what is called a translunar injection. This maneuver is necessary to send Orion 450,000km beyond Earth and 65,000km beyond the moon — further than any spaceship capable of carrying humans has ventured.
On its three-week mission, Orion would deploy 10 shoebox-sized satellites to gather information on the deep space environment. Its “passengers” would include three mannequins collecting radiation data and a NASA mascot.
Artemis-2 would be the first crewed test, flying around the moon without landing, while Artemis-3, planned for 2025, would see the first woman and first person of color touch down on the lunar south pole.
NASA wants to build a permanent presence on the moon and use it as a proving ground for technologies necessary for a Mars mission, sometime in the 2030s, using a Block 2 evolution of the SLS.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS