Moon program “Artemis”: New NASA rocket before the test

Today, NASA’s new super rocket will be rolled out of the workshop and onto the launch pad for the first time. In May, the SLS could then set off for the moon – albeit unmanned. Your maiden flight is to herald a new era.

“Thursday will be a day we will all remember”. Tom Whitmeyer gets a bit pathetic when he talks about this event – the “Roll Out”. He is responsible for the development of research projects at NASA and is visibly proud. Because today, NASA’s new super rocket will be rolled out of the workshop and onto the launch pad for the first time.

Your destination is the moon. Even though the “Artemis” lunar program is now behind schedule, things are progressing. The new rocket, specially developed for such missions to targets far from Earth, is simply called SLS, short for “Space Launch System”, i.e. system for space launches. “Artemis,” on the other hand, is the name of NASA’s overall multi-stage new lunar program to put humans back on the moon over the next three years.

NASA considers the SLS to be ready for launch

With the “Artemis-1” mission, NASA is now taking a first step, because there will be no people on board on the maiden flight. You will see a rocket with lateral boosters, as you know them from the shuttle flights. In the upper section is the actual spaceship that undertakes the journey through space. This capsule is called “Orion” and was contributed by the European Space Agency ESA.

The rocket built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin will show what it can do in May at the earliest. An SLS has never flown, and there were always setbacks during development. At NASA, however, the SLS is now considered mature and ready to go.

“Space travel still not routine”

Instead of the astronauts, two test dummies on board the “Orion spacecraft” will orbit the moon for six days. Their main task is to test a new protective suit against radiation. For NASA, one of the biggest concerns for extended trips and stays is the dangerous radiation in open space.

NASA’s new rocket is 98 meters high and will be the largest and most powerful rocket of all time in the third expansion stage. Now it is a good ten meters smaller than the Saturn V, with which the first people flew to the moon in 1969. “It’s quite a challenge for us. It’s a difficult vehicle, simply because it can do so much,” Tom Whitmeyer made clear at a press conference in advance that space travel is still far from routine.

Dress rehearsal with fuel

The first step to the moon will now be the slow drive to launch pad 39B – it is the neighboring pad of the Apollo missions. The rocket stands upright and takes eleven hours for the seven kilometers through the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When the weather cooperates, there is no lightning or hail.

But the weather forecast is promising, says “Artemis” flight director Charlie Blackwell-Thomson. The rocket was assembled a few weeks ago, and in the next few days it will be the turn of the so-called “wet rehersal” on the ramp, a dress rehearsal with fuel.

Moon stations are planned

If all goes well, NASA will signal the start of a program that will lead to a commercial moon. The space agency speaks of a veritable lunar economy that will bring hundreds of thousands of new jobs around the world in the future.

But there is still a long way to go until then. First, astronauts will only orbit the moon again. In 2025 some might end up there for the first time. The goal is then the first two lunar stations, one on the moon and one that orbits the earth’s satellite as a kind of shuttle station. All of this is in the planning stage and should become reality in the next 20 years, before moving on from the moon to Mars.