How a Boom in Mega Rockets Will Get Astronauts Back on the Moon

If you want to get to the moon, you need a mega rocket. NASA’s got one, in the form of the Space Launch System (SLS), a 32-story monster with a record setting 4 million kg (8.8 million lbs.) of thrust. The rocket launched on its maiden voyage in November, placing an uncrewed Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit—a mission dubbed Artemis I. Crewed missions are set to follow soon; the question is how soon.
The space agency has promised that Artemis II will carry four astronauts on a journey around the far side of the moon as early as next year, with Artemis III sticking a crewed lunar landing in 2025 or 2026 and further Artemis missions to follow at one-year intervals after that. To a lot of people that felt like overpromising—especially considering the SLS has been in development in one form or another since 2004, with just the one flight so far, at a cost of more than $4 billion, to show for it. If you don’t have plenty of rockets, you can’t have plenty of moon trips.
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As NASA reports this week, however, those rockets are very much in the pipeline, with fast-paced construction now underway on the SLS hardware needed for Artemis II, III, and IV at no fewer than five different assembly plants around the country. Slow off the mark for its very first launch, the SLS product line is now humming, making the prospect of Artemis II returning astronauts to the lunar vicinity in 2024 for the first time since 1972 look ...

Source: TIME: Science - February 10, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news