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NASA is preparing the first SLS moon rocket for the Artemis 1 test flight, a demo mission to send an unpiloted Orion crew capsule around the moon and back to Earth on a shakedown cruise before it flies with people.Ĭliff Lanham, NASA’s Artemis 1 flow director at Kennedy, said technicians spent the last few weeks repairing minor damage to foam insulation and servicing batteries on the SLS moon rocket. The huge SLS moon rocket is the largest ever built by NASA, and is the centerpiece of the agency’s Artemis moon program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade. After arriving at pad 39B later Friday morning, the crawler’s hydraulic jacking and leveling system will lower the mobile launch platform onto pedestals, positioning the rocket over the flame trench at the seaside launch complex. The full stack weighs about 21.4 million pounds for rollout. The crawler, upgraded after earlier use on the Apollo moon program and the space shuttle program, will reach a top speed of 0.8 mph on the 4.2-mile (6.8-kilometer) trip from the iconic rocket hangar at Kennedy to pad 39B EDT (0401 GMT) Friday.Īfter emerging from the VAB, the rocket, its mobile launch platform and tower, and the crawler will head for Launch Complex 39B on a journey expected to take between eight and 12 hours. The meeting concluded with a go-ahead to begin rollout of the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) moon rocket from the VAB around 12:01 a.m. NASA managers met Thursday and evaluated the weather forecast for rollout early Friday, and discussed computer models that suggest a weak tropical weather system could impact Florida’s Space Coast next week. One of NASA’s diesel-powered crawler transporters rolled into High Bay 3 on Wednesday and positioned itself under the SLS mobile launch platform. The spaceport did not suffer any significant damage as Hurricane Ian weakened to a tropical storm before its center passed directly over Kennedy Space Center.ĭuring October, technicians replaced batteries on different elements of the rocket, including its range safety flight termination system.
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14 to send the Artemis 1 test flight around the moon.Ī hydrogen fuel leak kept the mission from launching in early September, then NASA rolled the SLS moon rocket back inside the VAB on Sept. Credit: NASAĪfter replacing and recharging batteries in the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA ground teams plan to roll the more than 30-story-tall Space Launch System rocket back to its launch pad early Friday at Kennedy Space Center for another try Nov.
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NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building.
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