Extract from ABC News
NASA's new Moon rocket has blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard, bringing the US a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.
Key points:
- If all goes well, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the Moon
- The capsule will then return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December
- Artemis aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025
After years of delays and billions in cost overruns, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket thundered skyward, rising from Kennedy Space Center on 4 million kilograms of thrust and hitting 160 kph within seconds.
If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the Moon.
The capsule will then return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December.
Dubbed Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft together, built by Boeing and the Lockheed Martin Corporation respectively, under contract to NASA.
It also signals a major change in direction for NASA's post-Apollo human spaceflight program after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station.
Named after the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt — and Apollo's twin sister — Artemis aims to return astronauts to the Moon as early as 2025.
Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the surface.
But Apollo, born of the Cold War-era US-Soviet space race, was less science-driven than Artemis.
The new Moon program has enlisted commercial partners such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and the space agencies of Europe, Canada and Japan to eventually establish a long-term lunar base as a stepping stone to even more ambitious human voyages to Mars.
The Artemis I countdown climaxed with the rocket's four main R-25 engines and its twin solid-rocket boosters roaring to life, sending the spacecraft streaking skyward and lighting up the night sky over Florida's central Atlantic coast.
About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket's upper stage is designed to carry Orion out of Earth orbit on course for a 25-day flight that will bring it to within 97 km of the lunar surface, before sailing 64,374 km beyond the Moon and back to Earth.
Reuters/AP
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