Finally, Artemis-1, NASA’s unmanned Moon mission, has successfully launched. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 0647 GMT (12:17 PM IST) on Wednesday after enduring numerous delays brought on by technical issues and natural disasters (Read: Hurricane Ian and Nicole).
About the Artemis launch
“We are going. For the first time, the @NASA_SLS rocket and @NASA_Orion fly together. #Artemis I begins a new chapter in human lunar exploration,” tweeted NASA.
After the successful launch, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, director of NASA’s Artemis program, issued a statement in which he said: “This is for the Artemis generation and all the men and women across our great nation who have worked to bring this hardware together to make this day possible.” The launch on Wednesday wasn’t without issues though; reports of hydrogen fuel line leakage compelled the operation’s team to stop filling the tanks with fuel and send out a “red crew.” Notably, when the rocket is fuelled with propellant, the “red crew”—a team of specially trained engineers—can perform repairs.
SLS is the largest new vertical launch system that NASA has developed.
The Artemis program—named for Apollo’s mythological sister—is NASA’s follow-up to the Apollo lunar missions from fifty years ago, as widely documented by WION.
Six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, during which twelve men performed moonwalks, remain the only space missions to date to successfully land humans on the surface of the moon. Since the Saturn V rockets that were used in the 1960s and 1970s, the SLS is the largest new vertical launch system that NASA has developed.
The mission is the first step taken by the space agency toward establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon. The next objective would be to get ready for upcoming manned missions to the natural satellite of Earth.
NASA has spent at least $37 billion on the SLS-Orion spacecraft. After being beset by years of delays and billion-dollar cost overruns, its development took more than ten years. But Wednesday’s launch represents a sweet opportunity for the leading US space agency to atone.
