Hurricane Nicole brought strong winds, including some around the 74-knot level. The team made the call to leave the rocket on the pad and push the launch date to November 16. In the end, there wasn’t enough time to deliver it to shelter. But it’s more vulnerable if it’s on the crawler, the slow-moving machine that would be used to bring it indoors. Standing on the launchpad, parts of the rocket can tolerate sustained winds of up to 74 knots. NASA considered moving the rocket into shelter again, but that would have entailed some risks. Still, the Artemis team’s would-be third launch attempt on September 27 was canceled when Hurricane Ian came rumbling in, forcing the team to roll back the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for protection.Įarlier this month, they trundled the rocket back to the pad in anticipation of a November 14 launch, just as Tropical Storm Nicole-soon to elevate to hurricane strength-grew on the horizon. Its 26-day trip will end when it splashes down under parachutes into Pacific Ocean waters about 50 miles off the coast of San Diego, probably on December 11. While circling the moon, it will take images of the Earth and its satellite-including one like the iconic “Earthrise” photo taken on the Apollo 8 mission-and collect space radiation data so that scientists can learn more about potential health risks for astronauts on extended trips beyond the Earth’s protective atmosphere.Īt the end of November, Orion will leave that orbit and cruise 40,000 miles beyond the moon-the farthest a spacecraft capable of carrying humans has ever traveled-before slingshotting back past it en route to Earth in early December. Meanwhile Orion will fly on, taking about 10 days to reach the moon, where it will spend a couple of weeks in what’s called a “distant retrograde orbit,” which balances the gravitational pull of the Earth and moon and doesn’t take much fuel to maintain. As it drifts away, the upper stage will then disperse-in batches-10 small spacecraft known as CubeSats, sending them out to conduct mini missions around the moon, Mars, and a near-Earth asteroid. If the mission goes according to plan, after about two hours, the capsule will separate from the SLS upper stage. Orion continued on at over 16,000 miles per hour, and a few minutes later it deployed its solar arrays. That left the uncrewed Orion capsule still attached to the upper-stage rocket and the service module, provided by the European Space Agency, which supplies the spacecraft’s main propulsion and power. About eight minutes after launch, the core stage rocket used up its fuel and separated too. “We rise together, back to the moon and beyond.”Īfter the two-minute mark, the SLS boosters finished burning through their propellant and fell away. “Liftoff for Artemis 1,” proclaimed Derrol Nail, NASA’s livestream commentator. As the boosters ignited, the rocket lifted above an explosion of flames, and then it quickly cleared the launch tower and began its ascent through the atmosphere, an ombre orange streak blazing behind it. The 212-foot rocket, including an orange core stage and two white solid rocket boosters, had rested upon a ground structure called the mobile launcher, as it had during earlier tests. Crowds of onlookers watched at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the thunder of a NASA rocket could once again be heard at the launchpad where shuttles and the Apollo missions began their journeys into space. After years of delays and several false starts, the wait is finally over: NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule lifted off at 1:48 am Eastern time, heading for a historic lunar flyby.
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