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When new nasa The moon rocket will lift off on April 1, and its massive core stage will mix 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen with 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and ignite propellants in four eight-foot-wide engines, producing about 1.7 million pounds of thrust. Shortly after these main engines fire, two solid rocket boosters, one on each side, will ignite the gunpowder-like propellant to add 3.3 million pounds of thrust each.
That massive force will lift the 322-foot-tall rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), onto the first stage of Artemis II, a more than 600,000-mile journey to the moon and back.
“It’s like a whole building rising into the air,” he says. Natalie Quinteroperforms SLS core stage operations at Boeing, which built the central portion of the rocket. “Just the size of it is huge.”
The SLS rocket for Artemis II, a 10-day flyby mission, was recently launched from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and placed on the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA initially put the rocket on the pad in January, but the agency had to return it to the VAB for processing Problem loading helium onto the upper stage. The next launch period for the mission will be between April 1 and April 6.
Artemis II comes more than three years after Artemis I, the first and only unmanned test flight of the SLS and the Orion spacecraft. That first flight carried two beams called Helga and Zohar to measure radiation doses, but this second flight will carry flesh-and-blood astronauts, the first people to make a trip to the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
The crew of four includes the commander Reid Wisemana naval aviator who lived aboard the International Space Station and performed two spacewalks; pilot Victor GloverHe is also a naval aviator who has lived and worked on the International Space Station; Mission Specialist Christina Kocha field scientist and space instrument engineer who holds the women’s record for the longest single spaceflight at 328 days; And mission specialist Jeremy Hansena Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who would serve as the first Canadian to venture to the moon.
These four will join 24 others as the only people in history to have traveled all the way to the moon, with an average distance of about 240,000 miles. When Artemis 2 launches, the Moon will be near its farthest point, closer to 250,000 miles away. Because the Artemis 2 astronauts will fly higher above the moon’s surface than the Apollo astronauts did, they will travel farther from Earth than anyone else before.
“It is very likely, depending on the launch period in which we launch, that we will see things that no human has ever seen before,” Weissman said during a press conference. press conference Leading to launch.
NASA plans to Follow Artemis II with Artemis III in mid-2027. This mission will test a lunar lander from SpaceX, Blue Origin, or both in low Earth orbit, and practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers. Artemis 4, which NASA hopes to launch in 2028, would land astronauts on the moon. The long-term goal of the Artemis program is to continue a series of missions to establish a manned lunar station in preparation for missions to Mars and beyond.
