NASA Rolled out its Moon Rocket for the First Time

The vehicle also known as the Space Launch System (SLS), the vehicle was taken to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a dummy countdown. If it goes well, the rocket will be declared ready for a mission to send unmanned test capsules around the moon.

These missions are part of a programme called the Artemis programme. The agency administrator, Bill Nelson said, “We are entering a global era of human space exploration.” He told the spectator crowd at Kennedy Space Centre, “ The Artemis generation is preparing to reach new frontiers.”

He further said that this generation will return to the Moon and this time we will land the first woman and the first person of colour on the surface of the Moon.

Not only the astronauts will be sent far away from Earth, but sufficient equipment and cargo will allow their crew to leave for long periods of time. The rocket was mounted on a support structure called a mobile launcher. The structure itself was 120 m high and weighed 5,000 tonnes and was mounted on the same mammoth tractor that was used to move the Saturn Vs and later the Space Shuttles.

This mission, called Artemis 1, will use the rocket Orion Crew Capsule on a 26-day journey that includes an orbit around the Moon. No one will be present in the capsule during the test flight. This should happen on the second mission within a few years.

While NASA is engaged in developing the SLS, the American entrepreneur Elon Musk is also preparing an even larger vehicle at his R&D facility in Texas. He calls his rocket the Starship.