"On Saturday, the towering assembly - comprising the enormous Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and a new Orion spacecraft - rode atop a behemoth moving platform called a crawler-transporter, inching its way at around one mile per hour from its Vehicle Assembly Building on one side of the Kennedy Space Center to its launchpad over four miles away. The trek lasted until nightfall, a small test of patience for what is a lunar mission years in the making: Artemis II."
"Now that the rocket's on the pad, engineers will conduct what's known as a wet dress rehearsal, loading its propellant tanks with over 700,000 gallons of super-chilled liquid propellant and running through a mock launch countdown, stopping short of actually igniting the SLS's RS-25 engines. Afterwards, all of the propellant will be drained from the rocket, and from there, NASA will assess how the spacecraft performed."
NASA moved the Space Launch System rocket and a new Orion spacecraft from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad atop a crawler-transporter, traveling over four miles at about one mile per hour. The ten-day Artemis II mission will carry four astronauts on a close lunar flyaround to test life support and spacecraft systems; a lunar landing is planned for the subsequent Artemis III mission. Engineers will perform a wet dress rehearsal that loads over 700,000 gallons of super-chilled propellant and runs a mock countdown without engine ignition, then drain propellant and assess performance. No firm launch date has been announced.
Read at Futurism
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]