Footage of the rocket moving into position<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWhat a great day to be here,\u201d said Reid Wiseman, the crew commander. \u201cIt is awe-inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weighing in at 5m kg, the rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket\u2019s extra heft.<\/p>\n
The first and only other SLS launch \u2013 which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon \u2013 took place back in November 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,\u201d Nasa\u2019s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket\u2019s rollout.<\/p>\n
The Nasa administrator, Jared Isaacman, at a press conference with the Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover, and Commander Reid Wiseman. Photograph: Mauricio Paiz\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyses and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts will not orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.<\/p>\n
Wiseman, the pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch \u2013 longtime Nasa astronauts with space flight experience \u2013 will be joined on the 10-day mission by the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.<\/p>\n
They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17\u2019s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing programme in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. Only four moonwalkers are still alive; Aldrin, the oldest, turns 96 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cThey just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible discovering the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasa is waiting to conduct a fuelling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date.<\/p>\n
The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasa\u2019s giant new moon rocket has moved to the launch pad in preparation for astronauts\u2019 first lunar fly-around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-244627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}