After 50 years, NASA is again looking to send humans to the moon through its Artemis 1 mission. They are planning to launch their Lunar mission in either late August or early September.
The 29th of August is being targetted for the NASA Moon Rocket launch. However, September 2 and September 5 too are being eyed, just in case. This is about 50 years after the famous Apollo 1 mission that allowed astronaut Neil Armstrong to become the first man to step on the moon. Ever since then, NASA has been planning to land more humans on the moon and this time the first women and person of colour will be a part of their new quest through the Artemis 1 mission. The astronauts have already been identified and 9 of them are men and 9 women.
Talking about Artemis 1, it is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the Moon and Mars. Artemis 1 will be the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Here is what Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington said about this mission, “This is a mission that truly will do what hasn’t been done and learn what isn’t known,”. He further added “It will blaze a trail that people will follow on the next Orion flight, pushing the edges of the envelope to prepare for that mission.”
Regarding the launch of the NASA Mega Moon Rocket, NASA officials said that the SLS met about 90% of its pre-launch objectives, with only a few kinks left to iron out. One problem that was encountered was of faulty seals that allowed hydrogen leak, but it has been fixed.
Standing 322 feet (98 meters) tall when capped with the Orion crew capsule, the SLS is taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighs a massive 5.75 million pounds (2.6 million kilograms), according to NASA. While the SLS is slightly shorter than NASA’s Saturn V rocket, used during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s, it is considerably stronger, capable of delivering about 8.8 million pounds (4 million kg) of thrust, or 15% more than the Saturn V’s 7.5 million pounds (3.4 million kg) said NASA.
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