The lone U.S. astronaut currently in space took a picture of NASA’s first rocket designed for a human moon mission in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n
Artemis 2<\/a>‘s rocket, called the Space Launch System<\/a>, arrived at the launch pad Saturday (Jan. 17) \u2014 and may launch to the moon as soon as Feb. 6. From the International Space Station<\/a>, NASA astronaut Chris Williams captured a view of the rocket coastside at the Kennedy Space Center<\/a> in Florida. “If you zoom in on the rightmost launch pad, you can see a shadow just to the left of the center of the pad,” Williams said in an X post<\/a> Monday (Jan. 19). “That shadow is from the rocket (and launch tower) that will soon take four of my friends on a trip around the moon<\/a>.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Artemis 2 is expected to carry four astronauts on a lunar mission: NASA’s Reid Williams <\/a>(commander), Victor Glover<\/a> (pilot) and Christina Koch<\/a> (mission specialist), along with Canadian Space Agency<\/a> astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen<\/a>. Glover will be the first person of color to leave low Earth orbit, while Koch will be the first woman and Hansen will be the first non-American. The moon mission is the first to return astronauts to the lunar surface since Apollo 17<\/a>‘s moon-landing excursion in 1972.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Williams, temporarily flying solo on the U.S. side of the ISS after the early and unprecedented medical evacuation<\/a> of SpaceX Crew-11 on Jan. 15, said the space photo was not his best effort. (“Should have grabbed a different lens,” he added.) But it was a “special” image to him nonetheless, Williams said. The ISS coincidentally passed over Florida at about the same time SLS arrived<\/a> at Launch Pad 39B on Saturday at 6:42 p.m. EST (2342 GMT). The rocket spent nearly 12 hours carefully moving across KSC<\/a> on top of a baseball-infield-sized “crawler-transporter” previously tasked for Apollo and space shuttle missions.<\/p>\n The crew of Artemis 2 aims to spend 10 days testing the Orion spacecraft<\/a> on the capsule’s third space mission. The astronauts will first do a checkout in Earth orbit, and assuming all goes well, perform an engine burn (a trans-lunar injection) to bring them around the moon and home again.<\/p>\n Artemis 2 will be the first crewed flight for Orion. But an Orion flew uncrewed around Earth in 2014 for Exploration Flight Test-1 atop a United Launch Alliance<\/a> Delta IV rocket, and another uncrewed Orion went around the moon in 2022 with Artemis 1<\/a> \u2014 which flew atop SLS on the rocket’s first flight.<\/p>\n Artemis 2 will conduct a wide range of science and human health experiments to prepare for more long-duration moon missions. Artemis 3<\/a> is scheduled to land with astronauts in 2027 or 2028, pending readiness of the SpaceX Starship<\/a> lander currently tasked<\/a> to land astronauts there. More Artemis program<\/a> missions are expected to follow, as NASA aims to build up a permanent presence on the moon.<\/p>\n The launch date of Artemis 2 is subject to change as the rocket and spacecraft undergo tests at the pad, most especially a “wet dress rehearsal” (or fueling of the rocket, in a simulated launch sequence) that required multiple attempts for certification<\/a> of Artemis 1. The rehearsal is scheduled for no later than Feb. 2.<\/p>\n NASA has released windows for Artemis 2’s launch in February, March and April. Agency officials at KSC emphasized Jan. 16 they would launch Artemis 2 with safety in mind when the mission was ready, and not “rush” the process<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lone U.S. astronaut currently in space took a picture of NASA’s first rocket designed for a human…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-246454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}