NASA Launched Its Artemis 1 Moon Rocket Successfully

NASA has effectively and successfully launched its Moon-bound megarocket, the Space Launch System, after two unsuccessful tries. This rocket will travel farther than any other habitable spacecraft to date, beyond the far side of the Moon and back. The Artemis 1 mission is the first phase of NASA’s strategy to send a mission to Mars in the 2030s and make the first Moon landing in 50 years.

The rocket left NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 06:48 UTC on Wednesday, November 16, 2022. NASA reported that the main engine cutoff for the SLS rocket has occurred at 06:57 UTC. The core stage had detached and the RS-25 engines had stopped operating.

The solar panels will need to be deployed next in order for the rocket to be powered by the Sun. The test trip will cover 64,000 miles beyond the far side of the Moon and is unmanned.

For 25 days, 11 hours, and 36 minutes, the mission will last. The Space Launch System (SLS), which has travelled a total of 2.09 million kilometres, will splashdown back to Earth on December 11, 2022. This is the first of several, progressively more difficult missions that will eventually return people to the Moon for the first time since December 1972.

The new SLS being used is the most potent rocket NASA has ever launched, and it will not only travel to the Moon — farther than any human-built spacecraft has ever flown — but also deploy a few small satellites. In order to ensure that the spacecraft is secure for future crew, it is important to practise spacecraft operation and test crew circumstances.

Furthermore, NASA aims to use a more potent variant of the Space Send System rocket to launch Artemis 2, the first crewed Artemis mission, into space in 2024.