NASA’s Artemis II Moon mission moving towards launch
NASA rolls out fully stacked Artemis II The rocket and Orion capsule set off on the four-mile journey to the launch pad on Saturday
Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
NASA’s Artemis II Started its last journey on Earth on Saturday. The fully stacked Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule lift off from the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking a milestone for the first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years.
“This is the beginning of a very long journey,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a news conference Sunday.
It has called home from the huge shed, Artemis II A leisurely pace of one mile per hour will be required to travel the four miles to Launch Pad 39B, a journey that will take approximately eight to 10 days.
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Once the rocket reaches the pad, the real fun begins. On Friday, NASA officials conducted a series of tests and investigations Artemis II This must be completed before being cleared for takeoff, including a critical “wet dress rehearsal”. This involved pumping the rocket full of cryogenic propellant and practicing the countdown sequence as if it were about to launch – testing the rocket’s limits without humans onboard.
If all goes according to plan, NASA is targeting a launch before February 6.
Artemis II It’s a test of the space agency’s readiness to return humans to the moon’s surface — but the mission won’t actually land on the moon. Instead four astronauts—NASA’s Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—will fly a loop around the moon, going farther into space than any humans have gone before.
On the 10-day trip, the astronauts will conduct a series of experiments and tests that will inform NASA’s next planned Moon mission, Artemis III. Ultimately, the space agency wants to establish a permanent staff base on the lunar surface, a goal Isaacman emphasized at a press conference Saturday.
But before anything like this can happen, Artemis II First you have to complete your mission. “We’re really ready to go,” Wiseman said at the same news conference.
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