With a roar that lit up the night sky, NASA sent its colossal next-generation rocket soaring into space for the first time on Wednesday. The Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, took off at 1:47AM ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, signaling the start of a bold new era for the US government’s space program.
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is finally headed towards the Moon
It also marks a major success for NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon, which has been plagued by years of delays, development mishaps, and billions of dollars in budget overruns. During the past few months both hurricanes and technical difficulties caused launch delays — including two scrubs. Then, tonight, engineers managed to fix both an intermittent hydrogen leak and a “bad ethernet switch” in the hours just before launch.
NASA can now put many of those problems in the rear-view as it looks ahead to the program’s future.
“For the Artemis generation, this is for you,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, as she gave the go ahead for launch.
The SLS carried its Orion capsule to an altitude of just under 4,000 kilometers before the two craft separated and the core stage of the rocket fell back to Earth, falling into the Pacific Ocean. (The two solid boosters, which separated even earlier, fell back into the Atlantic.) Orion will continue onward to the Moon, which it will orbit for several days before returning to Earth. The capsule is scheduled to splash down in the ocean on December 11th. For this mission, Orion
