Artemis II Moon Mission: NASA Rolls Rocket to Launchpad

NASA has rolled out its Artemis II Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft out to the launchpad. The process took 12 hours to travel little over 6km. NASA is now preparing for a wet dress rehearsal ahead of the rocket’s launch in the next few months. At the weekend, NASA began the slow journey of rolling the Artemis II Space Launch System and Orion Spacecraft to the launch pad it will eventually depart from. The journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B is little over 6km but took a staggering 12 hours to complete. Granted, the NASA crawler-transporter 2 was going at just over 1kmph at full power given it’s carry a very heavy rocket that nothing can happen to. This towering rocket is likely the most important thing in the USA at the moment given that the Artemis II SLS and Orion are destined to take astronauts beyond low-earth orbit for the first time in many decades. So with the rocket at the launch pad, what happens now? According to NASA, a wet dress rehearsal will take place no later than 2nd February. In this rehearsal, NASA will top the rocket up with cryogenic propellants, run through the countdown procedure and then drain the fuel from the rocket to insure it is ready for a flight. However, if this wet dress rehearsal is completed and a problem is found, more work will be needed. “Additional wet dress rehearsals may be required to ensure the vehicle is completely checked out and ready for flight. If needed, NASA may rollback SLS and Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work ahead of launch after the wet dress rehearsal,” the space agency said in a statement. Artemis II will be a 10-day long journey around the Moon. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will embark on that journey but won’t land. This mission is vital not only for Artemis III but also for America’s ambitions of landing humans on Mars which seems to require that the country establish a base on the Moon. From this Moon base, it should be easier to launch missions deeper into the solar system. Granted, that could end up not being possible but the brightest minds seem to suggest this will and NASA is planning to build a reactor on the Moon to power a base and future missions. Once the wet dress rehearsal is complete we should learn more about the next phase of the mission and when it will launch.