NASA Set to Unveil Its Most Powerful Rocket to Date

(MENAFN) NASA prepares to showcase its most formidable launch vehicle Saturday as the agency advances toward humanity's first crewed lunar flyby mission since the Apollo era ended more than five decades ago.

The towering 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, crowned by the Orion capsule, will embark on a gradual 4-mile (6-kilometer) journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to its launch position at Kennedy Space Center in preparation for the astronaut-carrying Moon expedition.

Scheduled for liftoff no earlier than Feb. 6 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Artemis II mission will propel its crew across 685,000 miles during a lunar circumnavigation before concluding approximately 10 days later with an ocean landing in the Pacific.

This flight represents the second test of NASA's Space Launch System rocket and its inaugural voyage with human passengers aboard.

Throughout the mission, the four-person team will remain inside the Orion capsule, where they will test life-support and communication systems and rehearse docking maneuvers.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch will each embark on their second spaceflight, while Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will fly for the first time.

Historic milestones await: Koch is set to become the first woman and Glover the first person of color to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

Although the crew will neither land on the Moon nor enter lunar orbit, they will become the first humans to fly around it since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission comes after an uncrewed test in 2022 and is seen as a key step toward Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts near the Moon's south pole as early as next year.

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