Man on Moon Again? NASA's Lunar Rocket Blasts Off 50 Yrs After Apollo | All About Artemis Mission

NASA’s new moon rocket took off early Wednesday with three test dummies aboard, bringing the United States one step closer to returning astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo programme ended 50 years ago.

If everything goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket will launch an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, and the capsule will return to Earth in December with a splashdown in the Pacific.

After Years of Delay

The Space Launch System rocket thundered skyward after years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, rising from Kennedy Space Center on 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilogrammes) of thrust and reaching 100 mph (160 kph) in seconds. Not even two hours into the flight, the Orion capsule was perched on top, ready to launch from Earth orbit toward the moon.

The moonshot comes after nearly three months of frustrating fuel leaks that caused the rocket to bounce between its hangar and the pad. After being forced indoors by Hurricane Ian at the end of September, the rocket remained outside as Hurricane Nicole swept through last week with gusts of more than 80 mph (130 kph). Despite the fact that the wind had peeled away a 10-foot (3-meter) strip of caulking high up near the capsule, managers gave the go-ahead for the launch, the Associated Press reported.

People Watch

NASA expected 15,000 to jam the launch site, with thousands more lining the beaches and roads outside the gates, to witness NASA’s long-awaited sequel to Project Apollo, when 12 astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 and 1972. Crowds also gathered outside NASA centers in Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, to watch the spectacle on giant screens.

Cheers accompanied the rocket as it rode a huge trail of flame toward space, with a half-moon glowing brightly and buildings shaking as though hit by a major quake, the AP report stated.

“For the Artemis generation, this is for you,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson called out, referring to all those born after Apollo.

A Lunar Mission

The liftoff marked the start of NASA’s Artemis lunar-exploration program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The space agency is aiming to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight, in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025.

“You have earned your place in history,” Blackwell-Thompson told her team following liftoff. “You’re part of a first. Doesn’t come along very often. Once in a career maybe. But we are all part of something incredibly special: the first launch of Artemis. The first step in returning our country to the moon and on to Mars.”

The 322-foot (98-meter) SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, with more thrust than either the space shuttle or the mighty Saturn V that carried men to the moon. A series of hydrogen fuel leaks plagued the summertime launch attempts as well as countdown tests. A fresh leak erupted at a new location during Tuesday night’s fueling, but an emergency team managed to tighten the faulty valve on the pad. Then a U.S. Space Force radar station went down, resulting in another scramble, this time to replace an ethernet switch.

Orion should reach the moon by Monday, more than 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) from Earth. After coming within 80 miles (130 kilometers) of the moon, the capsule will enter a far-flung orbit stretching about 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond.

The Risk Involved

The $4.1 billion test flight is set to last 25 days, roughly the same as when crews will be aboard. The space agency intends to push the spacecraft to its limits and uncover any problems before astronauts strap in. The mannequins — NASA calls them moonequins — are fitted with sensors to measure such things as vibration, acceleration and cosmic radiation.

“There’s a fair amount of risk with this particular initial flight test,” said mission manager Mike Sarafin.

The rocket was supposed to have made its dry run by 2017. Government watchdogs estimate NASA will have spent $93 billion on the project by 2025.

Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

But many hurdles still need to be cleared. The Orion capsule will take astronauts only to lunar orbit, not the surface.

‘It Took My Breath Away’

NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop Starship, the 21st-century answer to Apollo’s lunar lander. Starship will carry astronauts back and forth between Orion and the lunar surface, at least on the first trip in 2025. The plan is to station Starship and eventually other companies’ landers in orbit around the moon, ready for use whenever new Orion crews pull up.

Reprising an argument that was made during the 1960s, Duke University historian Alex Roland questions the value of human spaceflight, saying robots and remote-controlled spacecraft could get the job done more cheaply, efficiently and safely.

“In all these years, no evidence has emerged to justify the investment we have made in human spaceflight — save the prestige involved in this conspicuous consumption,” he said.

NASA is waiting until this test flight is over before introducing the astronauts who will be on the next one and those who will follow in the bootsteps of Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Most of NASA’s corps of 42 active astronauts and 10 trainees were not even born yet when Apollo 17 moonwalkers Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the era, 50 years ago next month.

“We are jumping out of our spacesuits with excitement,” astronaut Christina Koch said Tuesday.

After a nearly yearlong space station mission and all-female spacewalk, Koch, 43, is on NASA’s short list for a lunar flight. So is astronaut Kayla Barron, 35, who finally got to witness her first rocket launch, not counting her own a year ago.

“It took my breath away, and I was tearing up,” Barron said. “What an amazing acccomplishment for this team.”

With inputs from the Associated Press

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