After months of delay, the NASA rocket “Space Launch System” (SLS) successfully started on its maiden flight on Wednesday. She is to send the Orion capsule to the moon.
(dpa)/tsf. The launch date of the latest NASA moon rocket has been pushed back again and again. On Wednesday morning shortly before 8 a.m. CET, the “Space Launch System” rocket with the unmanned capsule “Orion” successfully took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport, as shown in live images from the Nasa space agency. The “Orion” capsule will later be in orbit around the moon for around three weeks before it is expected to return to Earth on December 11th.
The mission has not been under a good star so far: After delays and exploding costs in development and construction, the first test launch had to be postponed numerous times – among other things because of two consecutive storms and various technical problems.
With the “Artemis” program, named after the Greek goddess of the moon, astronauts are to land on the moon again in the coming years. In future missions, four astronauts will initially be brought into lunar orbit with “Orion”, where two of them will transfer to a landing vehicle for the final approach to the moon. The start is currently planned for 2025 at the earliest. A rover should then also be transported.
In addition, outposts are to be built on the moon and in its orbit, also as a basis for a later Mars mission. The European space agency ESA and the space agencies of several other countries are also involved in the project, which currently costs around 30 billion dollars.
The last time NASA put people on the moon was in 197 with the “Apollo 17” mission. Overall, the USA was the only country with the “Apollo” missions between 1969 and 1972 twelve astronauts on the moon.
In the “Artemis 1” test mission that has just started, there are no people on board, but two dolls – or “astronaut phantoms”.