Artemis mission: The moon rocket is back on the launch pad
Are all good things four? Three attempts to launch the unmanned Orion capsule towards the moon have already had to be aborted. The next date is now 14 November.
NASA's giant rocket designed to carry the still unmanned Orion capsule towards the moon is back on launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a nearly nine-hour journey from the assembly building. This was announced by the US space agency on its blog and social media. This is the fourth trip to the launch pad for the Space Launch System (SLS) this year; twice it had been brought there for tests, then again for the planned launch in August, which had to be postponed several times and finally cancelled altogether. Now, on 14 November, a 69-minute launch window will open again from 17.07 German time, within which the Earth-Moon constellation is suitable for the planned route.
The new lunar module will be launched on the moon at the end of November.
NASA's new lunar mission is called Artemis-I and is scheduled to carry humans up to our satellite in 2025 at the earliest. In the upcoming test run, the space capsule will orbit the moon for several weeks and then return to Earth. At least that is the plan. But even before NASA rolled the rocket system towards the launch pad in August, not everything went smoothly: the construction, for example, took much longer than planned and also cost more money. Then the first two launch attempts had to be aborted at the beginning of September because of technical problems - including a leaking fuel hose - and the third at the end of September because of a tropical storm.
The rocket was launched in August.
The rocket weighs 2600 tonnes and is fuelled with more than three million litres of hydrogen. The programme's namesake is the goddess Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, who lent his name to the legendary Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. It is the first time in 50 years that a spacecraft has set off for the moon again - albeit still without humans on board. The capsule contains only measuring dolls and plush versions of Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep.
Spectrum of Science
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Originalartikel auf Spektrum.deTitelbild: NASA/JOEL KOWSKY
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