After 50 years, NASA will launch the most powerful rocket to the moon
For the first time in 50 years, today NASA plans to launch the first rocket that will be able to carry people to and from the moon in the future, reports "The Guardian".
The giant rocket The Space Launch System (SLS) is scheduled to lift off from NASA's Cape Canaveral complex in Florida at 8:33 a.m. local time (14:33 p.m. Macedonian time) atop an unmanned Orion spacecraft designed to carry up to six astronauts on The moon and beyond.
The mission of the SLS will be to take the Orion test capsule away from Earth. The spacecraft, in which the astronauts will be three dummies equipped with sensors, will circle the moon before returning to Earth in six weeks, when it is scheduled to crash into the Pacific Ocean. This is expected on October 10. 200.000 people are expected to witness the spectacular launch.
NASA's Space Shuttle program, as an intermediary, launched manned missions orbiting the earth in relatively close space before it was terminated in 2011.
US taxpayers are expected to shell out $93 billion to fund the Artemis program. But in the days leading up to the launch, NASA administrators insisted that Americans would find the cost justified.
"This is now the Artemis generation," NASA Administrator and former Space Shuttle astronaut Bill Nelson said recently. "We were in the Apollo generation. This is a new generation. This is a new type of astronaut."
For debut, Orion's only "crew members" will be mannequins intended to allow NASA to assess next-generation risks and radiation levels.
