The Artemis II rocket that\u2019s to carry Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the moon made its way Friday to the launch pad ahead of its planned April blastoff.<\/p>\n
NASA says it took 11 hours for the 322-foot, or 98-metre, rocket and its accompanying Orion spacecraft to travel four miles, or about six kilometres, from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/p>\n
The mission has been delayed a few times since February due to hydrogen fuel leaks and helium flow problems, but is scheduled to launch April 1.<\/p>\n
Hansen, who hails from London, Ont., will serve as mission specialist during Artemis II, becoming the first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
Artemis II will be the first crewed mission to the moon since 1972 \u2014 the year of the final Apollo mission.<\/p>\n
Space officials say teams are gearing up for the final stretch of prelaunch preparations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, Artemis II is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions to the Moon\u2019s surface, leading to a sustained presence on the Moon that will help the agency prepare to send astronauts to Mars,\u201d NASA said in a news release Friday.<\/p>\n
The four astronauts slated for the lunar fly-around \u2014 Hansen and three Americans \u2014 went into quarantine this week in Houston. They will zip around the moon in their capsule and then come straight home. <\/p>\n
The new Artemis program aims for a two-person landing in 2028.<\/p>\n
By Aaron Sousa<\/p>\n
With files from The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Artemis II rocket that\u2019s to carry Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the moon made its way Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[45,49,48,1688,47,66],"class_list":["post-551408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-manufacturing","tag-national","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}