Nasa rolls out its mega moon rocket for launch pad tests
- System is part of Nasa’s Artemis mission which aims to land US astronauts on the moon again
- Journey to launch pad marks public’s first glimpse of a space vehicle more than a decade in development
Nasa’s massive new rocket began its first journey to a launch pad ahead of a battery of tests that will clear it to blast off to the moon this summer.
It left the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday for an 11-hour journey on a crawler-transporter to the hallowed Launch Complex 39B, 6.5km (four miles) away. Around 10,000 people had gathered to watch the event.
With the Orion crew capsule fixed on top, the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1 stands 322 feet (98 meters) high – taller than the Statue of Liberty, but a little smaller than the 363 feet Saturn V rockets that powered the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Despite this, it will produce 8.8 million pounds of maximum thrust (39.1 Meganewtons), 15 per cent more than the Saturn V, meaning it’s expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket at the time it begins operating.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s most powerful rocket ever right here!” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson told a crowd. “We imagine, we build, we never stop pushing the envelope of what is possible.”
A symbol of US space ambition, it also comes with a hefty price tag: US$4.1 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions, Nasa Inspector General Paul Martin told Congress this month.