Nasa is about to roll its mega-Moon rocket to the launch pad for a critical test
Nasa’s Space Launch System will soon crawl its way to the launch pad for a critical “wet dress rehearsal.”
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Your support makes all the difference.Nasa is rolling out its big moon rocket Thursday evening on its way to the last critical launchpad test before a test flight later this year.
The 322-foot-tall Space Launch System (SLS) has been housed in the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, for months during testing and preparations. But at 5 p.m. ET/9 p.m. GMT Thursday, the massive rocket will inch its way out of the VAB atop the 6.6-million pound crawler, a treaded vehicle that will slowly carry the rocket and its mobile launch platform to Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
At a top speed of just more than 1.5 kilometers an hour, it’s a journey expected to take about 11 hours, providing clear views of Nasa’s largest rocket since the Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
“It’s really going to be a sight,” Nasa exploration ground systems manager Michael Bolger said in a media call about the rocket rollout.
Live coverage of the rollout will be available on Nasa’s website at https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive.
The SLS, like the vaunted Saturn V, is a Moon rocket, and along with Orion the makes up the launch vehicle Nasa built for its Artemis Moon program, which aims to return humans — including the first woman — to the Moon.
That Mission, Artemis III, won’t launch until sometime in 2025, following the crewed lunar flyby of Artemis II in May 2024, and the uncrewed test flight of Artemis I, which could lift off as soon as 7 May.
But first, SLS and Orion must undergo a “wet dress rehearsal” on 1 April, a critical test of ground infrastructure, countdown, and rocket fueling procedures. Nasa ground teams will load SLS with liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen for the test and then practice pumping it out of the rocket, the “wet” portion of the dress rehearsal.
Other important tests could keep SLS on the launchpad for as long as a month before Nasa rolls it back into the VAB for final preparations for launch. The space agency has yet to set a date for the launch pending the results of the wet dress rehearsal, but the upcoming launch windows run from 7 May through 12 May, 6 June through 16 June, and 29 June through 12 July.
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