![]() ![]() John Raoux/APĭuring the flight, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch atop the SLS rocket to reach the moon and travel thousands of miles beyond it – farther than any spacecraft intended to carry humans has ever traveled. Kennedy Space Center employees and their families gathered to watch the NASA Artemis rocket stack move. Depending on the results of the wet dress rehearsal, the uncrewed mission could launch in May, June or July. It’s all in preparation to establish a long-term lunar presence and to prepare for exploring Mars. ![]() The mission was originally scheduled to launch in November 2021, but the pandemic, storms like Hurricane Ida and other factors have drawn out the mission time line.Īrtemis I is the first step of NASA’s ambitious program to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon later in the 2020s. The Artemis program has experienced a multitude of delays. “It’s gathering very critical engineering data and validating our performance capability as spacecraft for our next mission and beyond – Artemis 2 with the crew and future missions as we go further and expand our capabilities in the solar system.” “Artemis I is such an important mission for us,” said Howard Hu, manager of the Orion program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, during the Monday press conference. NASA will send your name around the moon. NASA is preparing for the Artemis I mission at Cape Canaveral, Florida. If the test is successful, the stack will go back into the assembly building until it’s ready to launch. During the hours of prep leading up to the wet dress rehearsal, more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants will be loaded into the rocket The wet dress rehearsal includes running through the full set of operations to load propellant into the fuel tanks and a launch countdown – basically everything necessary for a launch without actually launching. NASA is collecting names to be put on a flash drive and sent into space on the Orion spacecraft. “Thursday is going to be a day to remember.”įollowing a couple weeks of tests at the pad, the vehicle will be ready for its wet dress rehearsal the weekend of April 1 – the final test before launching the first uncrewed Artemis mission beyond the moon and back to Earth. “Rolling out of the (Vehicle Assembly Building) is really an iconic moment for this vehicle,” said Tom Whitmeyer, associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters during a Monday press conference. The Artemis I rocket stack completed a nearly 11-hour journey to the launchpad on Friday morning. ![]() Together, the rocket and spacecraft stand just taller than the Statue of Liberty. “Every single vehicle that has carried humans beyond the bounds of low-Earth orbit has undergone integration and testing in that Vehicle Assembly Building, crawled down this roadway and launched right here from the Kennedy Space Center,” said Janet Petro, director for Kennedy Space Center, as the rollout began on Thursday. □ □ /woEq6oLhvn- NASA's Exploration Ground Systems March 17, 2022 ET on Friday.Īs the stack emerged on Thursday, it became the first moon-bound rocket to leave the building since Apollo 17 in 1972, or 50 years ago – also the last time anyone set foot on the moon. The stack arrived at the pad at 4:15 a.m. The 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) ride aboard one of the Apollo-era giant NASA crawlers from the assembly building to the launchpad took almost 11 hours. The NASA Artemis I stack, including the SLS rocket (right) topped with the Orion spacecraft, leaves the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 17.
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