Nasa rolls out its mega Moon rocket

WASHINGTON: Nasa’s massive new rocket eased onto its launchpad on Friday, ready for a battery of tests that will clear it to blast off to the Moon this summer on an uncrewed flight.

It left the Kennedy Space Centre’s Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday evening and began a nearly 11-hour journey on a crawler-transporter to the hallowed Launch Complex 39B, arriving at 4:15 am.

Around 10,000 people had gathered to watch the event. With the Orion crew capsule fixed on top, the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 stands 322 feet (98 meters) high -- taller than the Statue of Liberty, but a little smaller than the 363 feet Saturn V rockets that powered the Apollo missions to the Moon.

Still, it will produce 8.8 million pounds of maximum thrust (39.1 Meganewtons), 15 percent more than the Saturn V, meaning it’s expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket at the time it begins operating.

Having reached the iconic launchpad, where 53 Space Shuttles took off, there are roughly two more weeks’ worth of checks before what’s known as the "wet dress rehearsal." The SLS team will load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant into the rocket and practice every phase of launch countdown, stopping ten seconds before blast off.

"From this sacred and historical place, humanity will soon embark on a new era of exploration," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement on Friday. A symbol of US space ambition, it also comes with a hefty price tag: $4.1 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions, Nasa Inspector General Paul Martin told Congress this month.

Nasa is targeting May as the earliest window for Artemis-1, an uncrewed lunar mission that will be the first integrated flight for SLS and Orion. SLS will first place Orion into a low Earth orbit, and then, using its upper stage, perform what’s called a trans-lunar injection.

This maneuver is necessary to send Orion 280,000 miles beyond Earth and 40,000 miles beyond the Moon -- further than any spaceship capable of carrying humans has ventured.

On its three-week mission, Orion will deploy 10 shoebox size satellites known as CubeSats to gather information on the deep space environment. Its "passengers" will include three mannequins collecting radiation data, and a plush Snoopy toy, long a Nasa mascot.

It will journey around the far side of the Moon, using thrust provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) thruster, and finally make its way back to Earth, where its heat shield will be tested against the atmosphere.