Artemis 1, NASA’s most powerful moon rocket in history, blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on November 16 with three test dummies on board.
“Artemis I begins a new chapter in human lunar exploration,” the Space agency said in a tweet.
Around 100,000 to 200,000 people gathered at the Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of the unmanned spacecraft which comprised of the mighty Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and pioneering Orion capsule and lit up the whole night sky as it took off at 1.47 am ET. The rocket thundered skyward with 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust and hit 100 mph (160 kph) within seconds
Speaking to the media shortly after the liftoff, the launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said, “On behalf of all the men and women across our great nation who have worked to bring this hardware together to make this day possible, and for the Artemis generation, this is for you.”
Along with the three dummies, a Snoopy soft toy is also on board to gauge radiation levels and test new life-preservation systems and tools designed for the next generation of long-duration human spaceflight.
After propelling an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, the rocket will culminate in a Pacific Ocean splashdown on 11 December.
The success of the mission is vital to the Artemis 2 and 3 flights that will come later in the future. Both will carry humans to and from the moon, with the latter, expected to get launched in 2025 but might slip back a year, being the first crewed lunar landing since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago in December 1972.
According to an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University, Dr. Daniel Brown, the early blast off of NASA’s Artemis rocket marks the end of a long wait to put the unmanned Orion spacecraft into orbit and on its way around the Moon.