The first flight for 50 years. The most powerful rocket in the world flies for a month on August 29: where to look

Already, the new NASA rocket is on the starting ground and is preparing for launch. If the weather or technical malfunctions will not interfere with this, the start will take place today, August 29. If you have any problems, another window for launching into space is scheduled for September 2, 2022.

Launching the Space Launch System, which has to send an Orion spacecraft to the moon is the first step of NASA before returning a person to a month after the completion of American manual missions in 1972. The NASA monthly program is called artemis and consists of three stages: Artemis-1, Artemis-2 and Artemis-3. This first launch of a spacecraft within the Mission of Artemis-1 will be carried out so far without a crew.

But already in 2025, 4 astronauts will fly within the Mission of Artemis-3 a month, among which a woman and astronaut of non-European origin will be for the first time. Orion spacecraft will fly to a month, and this will be a test flight to check that this ship will handle its task. The trip to the Earth satellite and back will take 42 days and 20 minutes and 20 minutes, after which it should return to the ground on October 10 this year and drive in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

If everything goes according to the plan, the rocket starts between 3:30 pm and 17:30 in Kiev on August 29 from the 39b starting site at Kennedy NASA Space Center. The broadcast has already begun on the NASA official channel on YouTube. You can still look at the rocket preparing for the start. But then NASA promises to broadcast not only launch, but also a rocket flight in space. The SLS rocket is the most powerful rocket in the world today. Only the future SpaceX Starship rocket can surpass it.

The height of SLS-almost 100 meters, and the latest NASA rocket, which had similar specifications, was Saturn-5 missile. It was 110 meters high and fulfilled its last space mission in 1973. The Mission of Artemis-1 is the first test mission within the NASA Artemis monthly program. The Space Launch System rocket will send an Orion spacecraft to the moon still without a crew, and it will rotate a very elongated orbit around the moon.

At the nearest point, the ship will be 100 km from the month, and at the farthest - at a distance of 65 thousand km. There was no spacecraft designed for manned flights so far. The Artemis-2 mission is the second part of the Artemis. During this mission, the Orion spacecraft will go to the moon, but with four astronauts on board. The flight itself will last only 10 days, and the spacecraft will fly the ground twice, and then fly to a month and gets into its orbit at a distance of 7.

4 thousand km from the surface of the satellite. By the way, it will be the first manned flight with the flight of the moon in the 21st century. The Artemis-2 mission is a third of the NASA month. As part of this mission, the Orion spacecraft will also fly up to a month with four astronauts on board. But this time, two of them will be planted on the Earth's satellite for the first time in 50 years. This flight, which should last 30 days, is scheduled for 2025.

If everything goes according to the plan that for the first time since the end of the mission "Apollo-17" in 1972, two astronauts move on the surface of the moon. Among these two lucky ones, a woman will be for the first time. As part of the flight up to the moon, the Orion spacecraft should do the docking with the Gateway Monthly Orbital Station already completed at that time.

After that, two astronauts on the landing module will descend to the surface of the moon in the area of ​​Crater Sheklton at the south pole of the Earth's satellite. Within 6. 5 days, astronauts will leave the module 4 times. After completing this mission and the successful return of the crew to Earth, NASA plans to build a residential segment at the Gateway Station by 2030 and three more times during this time to land astronauts a month.

The focus has already written in detail about the Mission of Artemis-1 and the fact that on board the Orion spacecraft will fly dummies and plush toys. The SLS rocket will also bring out 10 small satellites to space, which have different tasks for space and moon exploration. Focus also wrote that the active development of the moon would soon begin and experts tried to calculate how much all resources on the Earth's satellite cost and how they would share the countries of the world.