Nasa’s mega Moon rocket arrives at launch pad

NASA’s megarocket has moved to the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, as final preparations continue for the first human mission to the Moon in more than 50 years.

The 98m-tall Space Launch System was transported vertically on the 6.5km journey from the vehicle assembly building to the pad in almost over 12 hours.

Once in place, final tests, checks and a dress rehearsal will take place before being cleared for the 10-day Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts around the Moon.

NASA says the earliest the rocket can be launched is February 6, but there will be further launch windows later that month, in March and April.

The rocket began moving at 07:04 local time (12:04 GMT) and arrived at Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 18:41 local time (23:42 GMT).

The rocket was carried by a huge machine called a crawler and reached a top speed of 0.82 mph (1.3 km/h) as it rolled. The live broadcast captured the slow-moving spectacle.

NASA said the rocket will be prepared for what it calls a “wet dress rehearsal” in the next few days for a test of fuel handling and countdown procedures.

The Artemis II crew — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were monitoring the rocket’s movement at the Kennedy Space Center.

In just a few weeks, four astronauts will be strapped into a spacecraft, placed on top of the rocket, and ready to head for the Moon.

This will be the first manned mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 touched down on the surface in December 1972.

NASA said the mission could take its astronauts into space where no one has been before.

Artemis II is not planned to land on the Moon, but will instead pave the way for a future Moon landing led by the Artemis III mission.

NASA said that the launch of Artemis III will take place in 2027 “at the earliest”. However, experts believe that the earliest possible date is 2028.

Koch said it was a great feeling to see the rocket.

“Astronauts are the calmest people on launch day. And I think … it feels that way because we’re so ready to do the mission that we came here to do and that we’re trained to do,” he said.

Hansen said he hopes the mission will inspire the world.

“The moon is something I take for granted. I’ve been looking at it my whole life, but then you look at it and look away,” he said.

“But now I’m looking at it more, and I think others will join us and look at the Moon more because people will be flying on the far side, and that’s a good thing for humanity.”

Artemis II will spend the first two days of their mission in orbit around the Earth before heading to the Moon.

“Almost immediately, we will enter an orbit 40,000 miles away, about a fifth of the distance from the Moon,” Koch told BBC News.

“We’re going to throw the world out the window in one ball, which is something none of us have seen from this perspective.

“And then we’ll go a quarter of a million miles away… doing a lot of science and operations along the way.”

While flying around the far side of the Moon, the crew will spend three hours observing the Moon, taking photographs and studying its geology; This will help plan and prepare for a future landing at the Moon’s south pole.

A significant part of the Orion spacecraft, on which the astronauts will fly, was produced in Bremen, Germany.

The European Service Module, located behind the crew capsule, is the European Space Agency’s contribution to the mission and was built by Airbus.

“The European Service Module is so important that we basically can’t get to the Moon without it,” says Sian Cleaver, a spacecraft engineer at Airbus.

“It provides the propulsion that Orion needs to take us to the Moon.”

He adds that large solar panels will generate all of the ship’s electrical power.

“We also have large tanks filled with oxygen and nitrogen that are mixed to create air and water, so we can provide everything the astronauts need in the crew module to ensure they survive their journey.”

Inside their clean room, the team is busy creating more modules for future Artemis missions. Each one takes about 18 months to put together, but took thousands of engineering hours to design. Everything on the ship needs to work perfectly.

“We need to get these astronauts to the Moon and back again in a completely safe manner,” Cleaver says.

With the rocket now on launch pad 39B, the Artemis team has been working around the clock to prepare it for liftoff.

The mission was already facing years of delays, and NASA is under pressure to get astronauts on the road as quickly as possible. But the US space agency said it would not compromise on safety.

John Honeycutt, head of the Artemis mission management team, said: “I have only one job and that is to get Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy back safely.

“We will fly when we are ready… the safety of the crew will be our number one priority.”