Artemis rocketship on course for moon
NASA’S next-generation rocketship was on course yesterday for a crewless voyage around the moon and back, launched from Florida on its debut flight half a century after the final lunar mission of the Apollo era.
The much-delayed launch kicked off Apollo’s successor programme, Artemis, aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establishing a sustainable base there as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.
The 32-storey-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket blasted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center, piercing the blackness over Cape Canaveral with a reddish-orange tail of fire.
About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage successfully thrust the Orion capsule out of Earth orbit and on its trajectory to the moon, Nasa announced.
“Today, we got to witness the world’s most powerful rocket take the Earth by its edges ... And it was quite a sight,” said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin. Aside from some minor instrument issues, “this system is performing exactly as we intended it to”, he said.
Lift-off came on the third attempt at launching the multibillion-dollar rocket, after 10 weeks beset by technical mishaps, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad.
About four hours before yesterday’s blast-off, crews had to deal with a flurry of simultaneous issues, including a leaky fuel valve. Quick work by a special team of technicians, who tightened down a loose connection on
the launch pad well inside the “blast zone” demarcated around a nearly fully fuelled rocket, was credited with saving the launch.
The three-week Artemis I mission marks the first flight of the combined SLS rocket and the Orion capsule together, built by Boeing Co BA.N and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively, under contract with Nasa.
After decades with Nasa focused on low-earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station, Artemis I also signals a major change in direction for the agency’s post-apollo human spaceflight programme.
Named for the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt – and Apollo’s twin sister – Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2025. More science-driven than Apollo – born of the Cold War-era Us-soviet
space race that put 12 Nasa astronauts on the moon during six missions from 1969 to 1972 – the Artemis programme has enlisted commercial partners such as Elon Musk’s Spacex and the space agencies of Europe, Canada and Japan.
The Artemis I mission entails a 25-day Orion flight bringing the capsule to within 97km of the lunar surface before flying 64 400km beyond the moon and looping back to Earth.
The capsule is expected to splash down at sea on December 11.
The thrust produced at launch by the rocket’s four main R-25 engines and twin solid-rocket boosters sent shock waves across the Kennedy complex, where crowds of spectators cheered and screamed. “It was just incredible to see. It was so bright, so loud, you could feel it,” said astronaut Jessica Meir, an Artemis crew candidate.