NASA’s New Moon rocket took off on its test flight with three dummies on board early Wednesday, bringing the United States closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years.
If all goes well during the three-week flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, before the capsule returns to Earth with a splash in the Pacific in December.
After years of delays and billions in cost overruns, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket thundered into the sky, lifting from Kennedy Space Center with 4 million kg of thrust and reaching 160 km/h in a matter of seconds.
“I’m telling you, we’ve never seen a tail of flame like this,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who followed the launch with a group of astronauts.
“There was a group there that would love to be on that rocket and I have to say, from what we saw tonight, it’s an A-plus,” he said.
The Orion capsule was placed on top of the rocket and, less than two hours into the flight, it left Earth’s orbit for the Moon.
“For the Artemis generation, this is for you,” launch manager Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said shortly before liftoff, referring to the people who weren’t alive for the Apollo program, which ended last year. 50 years
He later told his team, “You have earned your place in history.”
The launch marked the beginning of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.
The space agency aims to send four astronauts around the Moon on the next flyby in 2024 and land humans there as early as 2025.
Rising after months of delays
The launch follows nearly three months of troublesome fuel leaks that kept the rocket bouncing between its hangar and pad.
A series of hydrogen fuel leaks plagued launch attempts in the summer as well as countdown tests.
A new leak erupted in a new location during Tuesday night’s refueling, but an emergency crew managed to tighten the faulty bearing valve.
Then a US Space Force radar station went down, leading to another scramble, this time to replace an ethernet switch.
The 98-meter SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, with more thrust than the Space Shuttle or the mighty Saturn V that took men to the Moon.
Orion should reach the Moon on Monday, more than 370,000 km from Earth. After reaching within 130 km of the Moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit that extends about 64,000 km beyond.
Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin said the rocket is working mostly as it should.
He said there were some minor issues that he called “funny,” but Sarafin and other officials emphasized that all systems were “working.”
Orion Program Director Howard Hu said NASA would continue to test Artemis’ engines and other functions, especially in the conditions of space.
In a press conference after the launch, Nelson said, “This is just the test flight, and we’re stressing it and testing it in a way that we wouldn’t with a human crew. But that’s the purpose, do it. as safe as possible, as reliable as possible, for when our astronauts crawl aboard and go back to the Moon.”
Test flight dummies in orbit for 25 days
The $4.1 billion (€3.9 billion) test flight is scheduled to last 25 days, roughly the same as when the crews will be on board.
The space agency intends to push the spacecraft to its limits and uncover any problems before the astronauts get stuck.
The dummies – NASA calls them moonequins – are equipped with sensors to measure things like vibration, acceleration and cosmic radiation.
“There is a fair amount of risk with this particular initial flight test,” Sarafin said.
The rocket was supposed to have made its dry run in 2017. Government watchdogs estimate that NASA will have spent $93 billion (€90 billion) on the project by 2025.
Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the Moon and send astronauts to Mars in the late 2030s or early 2040s.