Cape Canaveral, Florida – For the second time this year, NASA moved its lunar rocket from the hangar to the pad on Friday, hopefully Launch of four astronauts on Flying on the moon Next month.
If the latest fixes are successful and everything else goes as NASA wants,… Space launch system It could lift off as early as April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Artemis II crew entered quarantine this week in Houston.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its slow, 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) journey at midnight, transported atop a massive crawler that has been used since the Apollo era in the 1960s. The journey was halted for several hours due to strong winds, but was completed by midday, 11 hours after it began.
The three Americans and one Canadian will circumnavigate the moon in their capsule and then return straight home without stopping. Their mission should have been completed by now, but a hydrogen fuel leak and clogged helium lines led to a two-month delay.
While technicians plugged leaks in the pad, the helium problem could only be fixed in the Vehicle Assembly Building, forcing NASA to return the rocket at the end of February.
The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The new Artemis program aims to land two people in 2028.
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