{"id":377066,"date":"2026-04-01T20:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377066\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:54:09","slug":"artemis-ii-nasa-reports-issue-with-flight-termination-system-as-moon-mission-prepares-to-launch-watch-and-follow-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377066\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis II: Nasa reports issue with flight termination system as Moon mission prepares to launch &#8211; watch and follow live"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet SLS, the rocket taking Nasa&#8217;s crew into spacepublished at 21:30 BST<\/p>\n<p>21:30 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1l98ssq-Contributor etflsgg2\">The Visual Journalism Team<br \/>BBC News<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The launch window is now just two hours away. Lets take a look at the rocket that will be taking the Artemis II crew into space:<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Artemis II astronauts will begin the mission on Nasa\u2019s rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). It is the most powerful rocket the US space agency has ever built.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Standing 98m tall (322 ft), the SLS has four engines to provide the power to get off the ground. The core stage is essentially a giant fuel tank, containing more than three million litres of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its job is to carry the Orion spacecraft &#8211; which houses the tiny crew module where the astronauts will spend the next 10 days &#8211; into space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">SLS has flown only once before, launching in 2022 with no astronauts onboard for the Artemis I mission. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The launch is one of the most dangerous parts of the mission &#8211; everything has to go perfectly. But if anything does go wrong during the early stages of the launch, the Launch Abort System, at the very top of the rocket, should propel the astronauts to safety.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"An illustration showing how the Artemis II astronauts will be arranged in the Orion crew module at launch. The four astronauts sit reclined, in two rows of two, facing up with their backs towards the ground. During the mission the four crew members will spend 10 days in about nine cubic metres of living space. The image shows that the crew module makes up about half of the Orion spacecraft - with the service module being around the same size - and that, on the launchpad, Orion is only a small section of the 98m (320ft) Space Launch System rocket.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8056fefd-0bb7-426f-bd8b-60561dfe29e7.png.webp.webp\"  width=\"1280\" height=\"1380\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meet SLS, the rocket taking Nasa&#8217;s crew into spacepublished at 21:30 BST 21:30 BST The Visual Journalism TeamBBC&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-377066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377066","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=377066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}