NASA’s SLS Lunar Rocket Arrives on Launchpad for the First Time


NASA’s giant new moon rocket is finally on its launch pad, but when it might finally leave Earth has yet to be determined.

For the first time on Thursday evening, a fully stacked Space Launch System rocket and accompanying launch tower emerged from the Vehicle Assembly Building, essentially a gigantic garage for rockets, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket, with an Orion capsule on which astronauts would one day sit, was slowly transported to the launch site more than four miles away on a giant crawler.

“Getting out of the VAB is a truly iconic moment for this vehicle,” Tom Whitmeyer, deputy director of exploration systems development at NASA headquarters, said at a press conference Monday. “To be here for the next generation of a super heavy-lift, exploration class vehicle, Thursday will be an unforgettable day.”

The journey took nearly 12 hours. NASA announced that the rocket had reached its target around 5:30 am on Friday.

Thursday and Friday’s scene was reminiscent of NASA’s Apollo era, where half a century ago the Saturn 5 rockets made similar journeys to the launch pads of the moon landings. The crawler used on Thursday was the same one carrying the Saturn 5s, though it was refurbished and modernized for Artemis, the new NASA program to one day return astronauts to the lunar surface.

The rocket will sit for the next two weeks as engineers check the various systems on the rocket and launch pad, known as Launch Complex 39B. If all goes well, the tests will result in a countdown to early April with hundreds of thousands of gallons of cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen flowing into the propellant tanks.

However, the engines will not fire and the rocket will not leave the ground. This will be what NASA calls a “wet suit rehearsal”—wet because it involves refueling liquid fuels—and will be the last major pass before a launch takes place. The countdown will stop approximately 10 seconds before the engines fire.

After the wet suit rehearsal, the rocket will make its return journey to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

The next time the rocket spawns, it will be for launch. NASA officials say they’d like to see how rehearsal goes before deciding when that might happen—perhaps as early as this summer.

In the first mission, there will be no astronauts on board. The uncrewed test flight, known as Artemis 1, will first orbit Earth before its second-stage engine propels it from low Earth orbit toward the moon. The Orion capsule will then leave the second stage and enter orbit of the moon a few days later.

The mission, which will last about three weeks, will end when Orion splashes into the Pacific Ocean.

Both the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

In 2024, NASA planned Artemis 2, the first mission since 1972 to fly astronauts around the moon and back. Then another team of astronauts will land on the moon with Artemis 3, a mission NASA has planned for 2025. , but that timeline may be delayed again.

The mission to land on the Moon will require the use of a separate landing craft. Giant Starship rocket built by SpaceX. Starship could also make its first test flight into space this year.



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