The system is to be tested on the ground in the middle of the month – everything went wrong in March.
The US space agency Nasa has once again deployed its crisis-ridden new rocket system for test purposes at the Cape Canaveral spaceport.
The system – consisting of the “Space Launch System” rocket and the “Orion” capsule – was driven out of the factory on Monday in the US state of Florida on a kind of transport vehicle and in an eight-hour operation slowly the approximately six kilometers to the launch site brought.
The next unmanned ground test of the system is then planned for mid-June at the earliest. During the so-called “wet dress rehearsal”, all processes are tested except for the actual start. A first such test had to be canceled several times in March due to various technical problems. The launch should be tested for the first time in August at the earliest.
With the “Artemis” mission, US astronauts were supposed to land on the moon again by 2024, including a woman for the first time. This is now planned for 2025 at the earliest. Four astronauts are to be taken to lunar orbit in the Orion spacecraft, where two of them will then transfer to a landing vehicle. A kind of space station is also to be created on the moon, also as a basis for a manned flight to Mars – but that will only happen in the distant future.
