Cape Canaveral Aug. 17 (BUS): NASA’s New Moon rocket reached the launch pad Wednesday ahead of its first flight in less than two weeks, according to the Associated Press.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket blasted off from the giant’s hangar late Tuesday night, drawing throngs of Kennedy Space Center workers, many of them unborn when NASA sent astronauts to the moon half a century ago. The rocket took about 10 hours to travel four miles to the platform, stopping at sunrise.
NASA aims to take off on August 29 for the test flight on the moon. There will be no one inside the crew capsule above the rocket, just three mannequins filled with sensors to measure radiation and vibration.
The capsule will fly around the moon in a distant orbit for two weeks, before returning to the Pacific Ocean. The entire trip should take six weeks.
The flight is the first lunar flight in NASA’s Artemis program. The space agency aims to make a lunar orbit flight with astronauts within two years and land a human crew on the moon as early as 2025.
This was much later than NASA had expected when it created the program more than a decade ago, as the space shuttle fleet was retired. Years of delays have added billions of dollars to the cost.
NASA’s new SLS moon rocket, short for Space Launch System, is 41 feet (12 meters) shorter than the Saturn 5 rockets used during Apollo half a century ago. But it is more powerful, using a core stage and dual-belt boosters, similar to those used on space shuttles.
Twenty-four astronauts flew to the Moon during the Apollo flight, 12 of whom landed on it from 1969 through 1972. The space agency wants a more diverse team and a more sustainable effort under Artemis, named after the legendary twin sister of Apollo.
This was the missile’s third flight to the platform. A test countdown timer in April caused a fuel leak and other equipment problems, forcing NASA to return the rocket to the hangar for repair. Retraining on catwalk dress in June, with better results.
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