Nasa’s Artemis Moon rocket lifts off Earth

The American space agency Nasa has launched its most powerful ever rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The 100m-tall Artemis vehicle climbed skyward in a stupendous mix of light and sound. Its objective was to hurl an astronaut capsule in the direction of the Moon.

This spacecraft, known as Orion, is uncrewed for this particular flight, but if everything works as it should, people will climb aboard for future missions that go to the lunar surface. The Wednesday’s flight followed two previous launch attempts in August and September that were aborted during the countdown because of technical woes.

“Today, we got to witness the world’s most powerful rocket take the Earth by its edges and shake the wicked out of it,” said Mike Sarafin, Nasa’s Artemis mission.

“That’s the biggest flame I’ve ever seen. It’s the most acoustical shockwave that I have ever experienced,” he commented. “I have to say what we saw tonight was an A+. But we have still a long ways to go. This is just a test flight,” mentioned Bill Nelson the agency’s administrator.

The rocket had a number of important manoeuvres to perform high above the planet to get the capsule on the right path to the Moon, the ship will now rely on its European propulsion module to shepherd it safely on the rest of the mission.

Josef Aschbacher is director general of the European Space Agency (Esa): mentioned that they will make sure that Orion is powered safely to the Moon, circles the Moon, and then bring it back safely to Earth, making sure that the entry of the capsule into the atmosphere is on the right trajectory and at the right angle so that it can land in the Pacific Ocean.

December will see Nasa celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17, the very last time humans walked on the Moon.

The space agency is calling its new programme Artemis (Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology).

It’s planning a series of ever more complex missions over the next decade that should result in a more sustained presence at Earth’s satellite, with the presence of surface habitats and the use of rovers, together with a mini space station in orbit around the Moon.

Source: BBC