SLS. Three letters for Space Launch System. This is the name of NASA’s new rocket, which should mark the return of man to the Moon. And yet, 52 years after the first steps on our satellite, the challenge promises to be beyond measure.
From its height of 99 meters and weighing 2,700 tons on the scale, this launcher appears to be the most powerful rocket in history. In March 2022, the object entered a test phase on the launch pad of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. A first launch should take place next summer in Florida, but this monster will be the central element of the success of the Artemis space project, on which most space agencies in the world are working, under the leadership of NASA. The SLS rocket is the result of 11 years of development since the launch of the project.
We are going. pic.twitter.com/JjAST7GQae
– NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) March 17, 2022
Above all, this super-launcher bears witness to the magnitude of a journey of approximately 380,000 km that humanity has not undertaken since 1972, 50 years ago already, when the Apollo 17 mission marked the end of the lunar program. from NASA. In order to propel the crew, its food and its equipment, it was necessary to design a colossus at least equivalent to the Saturn V rocket which officiated in the Apollo program, and peaked at 110 meters high.
If the American space agency currently communicates on its new advances by sharing its agenda almost daily, the SLS launcher is above all the culmination of an international project. France and its experts from ESA and Cnes also have a lot to do with it. The Orion capsule that can be observed at its top was designed in France and it is the very one in which the astronauts will take place to land on the Moon.
Unlike its 1969 cousin where three occupants took place, up to four astronauts can fit in there. With a diameter of five meters and two meters high, it will allow the crew and their equipment to join SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS), which will be waiting for them in orbit. It is this device that will take care of the moon landing.
Moon target in 2024-2025
According to NASA’s calendar, 2022 will mark a first test launch for the SLS rocket, but this one will not be manned. A second flight, with a crew, should then leave around the Moon, but without landing there in 2024, before the real journey signing the return of astronauts to the Moon takes place in 2025, at best.
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A crew whose name of the astronauts is not yet known. But NASA promises that finally at least one woman will be part of it. She will then be the first to set foot on our satellite.
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