The 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket is scheduled to launch its first unmanned space mission on Aug. 29. It will be a crucial demonstration trip to the moon for NASA’s Artemis program, the United States’ multibillion-dollar effort to return humans to the lunar surface as practice for future missions to Mars.
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The Space Launch System, developed over the past decade by Boeing Co, lifted off from its assembly building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) on Tuesday and began a route 6 kilometers. ) trekking to its launch point. Moving less than 1 mph (1.6 km/h), the mood will last about 11 hours. Atop the rocket is NASA’s Orion astronaut capsule, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. It is designed to separate from the rocket in space, carry humans to the moon, and rendezvous with a separate spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the lunar surface. For the Aug. 29 mission, called Artemis 1, the Orion capsule will launch atop the unmanned Space Launch System and orbit the moon before returning to Earth for an ocean dive 42 days later. If bad launch weather or a minor technical issue causes a delay on August 29, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has backup launch dates of September 2 and 5. (Reporting by Joey Roulette; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Leslie Adler and Gerry Doyle)
