{"id":250614,"date":"2026-01-18T04:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T04:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/250614\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T04:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T04:37:09","slug":"nasa-rolls-out-rocket-for-first-mission-in-over-50-years-to-take-crew-around-moon-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/250614\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasa rolls out rocket for first mission in over 50 years to take crew around moon \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasa<\/a> has begun rolling out a rocket in its mission to take astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

The launch window for the Artemis II mission opens on February 6th. The rocket began its move towards the launchpad at the US<\/a> space agency\u2019s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 10-day manned mission is set to be the first to travel around the moon and back again since Apollo 17 in 1972, with Nasa\u2019s subsequent Artemis III mission planned to return humans to the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

Nasa said Artemis \u201cwill send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n

The space agency\u2019s crawler-transporter 2 vehicle carried the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft on Saturday along the 6\u00bdkm route from an assembly building to launchpad \u2013 a journey that will take up to 12 hours.<\/p>\n

Once at the launchpad, engineers in the coming days will prepare SLS and Orion for a rehearsal test that includes loading all the propellants into the rocket.<\/p>\n

Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman said the mission would fulfil \u201ca promise to the American people that we will return to the moon\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Isaacman said the moon would be a \u201cperfect proving ground\u201d for autonomous capabilities within spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Centre on Saturday, the billionaire entrepreneur added: \u201cWe talk about building a moon base.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, day one of the moon base is not going to look like this glass-enclosed dome city that we might imagine some day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s certainly what the ideal end state would be. But it\u2019s probably a lot of rovers that are moving around, a lot of autonomous rovers that are experimenting with mining, or some mineral extraction capabilities to start.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally, in terms of what we want to achieve in space, you\u2019re going to incorporate more autonomy in our robotic missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at a mission to Venus right now that could have some onboard AI capabilities in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is the way we\u2019re going to go. But I tell you, if humans are on a spacecraft, they\u2019ll always have a vote, they always have a say in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artemis II mission crew consists of Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.<\/p>\n

Mr Hansen said the mission was \u201cgood for humanity\u201d, adding that he had previously taken the moon \u201cfor granted\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Canadian former fighter pilot said: \u201cBut now I\u2019ve been staring at it a lot more. And I think others are going to join us in staring at the moon a lot more as there are humans flying around the far side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Koch said: \u201cAs astronauts, one of the qualities that we talk about a lot is adaptability. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea that, yes, you train and prepare for everything, but the most important thing is that you\u2019re ready to take on what you haven\u2019t prepared for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronaut added: \u201cThe moon is like a witness plate for everything that\u2019s actually happened to Earth but has since been erased by our weathering processes and our tectonic processes and our other geologic processes. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can actually learn more about solar system formation, more about how planets form maybe around other stars, more about the likelihood of life out there \u2013 starting with studying the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mission will see Orion splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, and the spacecraft and crew will be recovered with the help of the US Navy. \u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasa has begun rolling out a rocket in its mission to take astronauts around the moon for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,91,82,247],"class_list":["post-250614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}