Science News

NASA ushers Artemis 2 moon rocket CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — One of the most significant events in the history of human space exploration has just taken place as NASA’s Artemis 2 moon rocket—the next huge step in lunar missions—has been moved to its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. An astonishing Space Photo of the Day was taken on the date of the event January 19, 2025, and it displayed the enormous Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft towering over the sky of Florida, waiting for mankind's return to the moon’s surrounding area 🛰️ A Historic Journey Begins The Artemis 2 rocket, which in a way marks the beginning of the human spaceflight era to the moon orbit and beyond for NASA, was moved from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to Launch Complex-39B on the evening of January 17. The operation lasted for several hours and involved crawling through approximately 4 miles on a very slow speed, not exceeding that of walking. The iconic Crawler-Transporter was the one moving the rocket and the Orion crew capsule which were just a bit faster than the engineers' inspection of the assembled flight vehicle on the pad. This photo taken during the rollout shows the exact instant when the 322-foot tall stack was coming out of the VAB and was starting its way to the pad—an operation having a symbolic “shift” from assembly mode to full launch campaign activities 👨‍🚀 The Mission Ahead Artemis 2 is planned to take four crew members—NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen—on a 10-day venture around the Moon and return to Earth. The mission will not be landing on the moon but it will be following a free-return trajectory, thus lo