NASA’s massive Moon rocket took off on its first mission on Wednesday (November 16) at 1.47 a.m. EST (12.17 p.m. IST), ushering in an exciting new age of deep space exploration half a century after the six Apollo manned Moon landings between 1969 and 1972.
The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle’s Orion space capsule will perform a 25-day lunar Orbiter mission before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.
The launch on Wednesday occurred after two previous launches on August 29 and September 3 were cancelled due to technical concerns discovered during the countdown.
The mission, known as Artemis 1, is unmanned, but three dummies that simulate astronauts are heading to the Moon on board Orion to conduct testing ahead of future manned flights to the Moon and beyond.
Space exploration has advanced dramatically since the Apollo flights 50 years ago. Beyond the solar system, spacecraft have travelled, and exploration missions have examined Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. More than 500 people have been to and from space, and permanent space labs such as the International Space Station (ISS) and China’s Tiangong space station have been established.
However, numerous promises remain unmet, including the potential of landing and residing on other planets, as well as maybe encountering extraterrestrial life forms in deep space. These are the promises that the new era of space exploration hopes to fulfil.
While Artemis 1 appears to have modest mission objectives (it is technically merely a lunar Orbiter mission with no people aboard), it is a stepping stone to far larger things.
It is the first of a series of missions that will not only return humans to the Moon, but will also research the possibility of staying there for a lengthy period of time and using the Moon as a launch pad for deep space expeditions.
The Artemis missions will build on previous advances in space technology and provide the groundwork for more complicated and ambitious operations in the future.
It will strive to collect resources from the Moon, construct with materials discovered there, and harness hydrogen or helium as an energy source. Not everything will happen on the first trip, but these things are now plainly achievable, making human landings on the Moon far more momentous than in the past.
