Nasa S Artemis I Mission Is Set To Launch The Sls Spacecraft To The Moon

Consider this SLS cheat sheet as NASA prepares for its big launch on September 3rd.

What is SLS?

It represents the Space Launch System. It seems like a very boring name. Is. But it’s also highly functional, as it refers to a system for launching things into space. What kinds of things can SLS launch? So many things! This version of the SLS has four large rocket engines and two solid-state boosters and can carry about 27 metric tons to the general vicinity of the Moon. That’s more than the space shuttle could carry to low earth orbit, but less than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket could carry to the Moon. Future versions of the SLS will be able to carry even more. SLS and Orion roll onto the launch pad Image: NASA / Kim Shiflett Wow, how is he going to do that? It will go off like a £5.75m firework. Those boosters — the twin white cylinders on either side of the rocket — are 17 stories tall and filled with a solid rocket fuel called polybutadiene acrylonitrile. They make six tons of this fuel every second, according to NASA. In case you were wondering what this is about jumbo jets, NASA has you covered. Each “produces more thrust than 14 four-engine jumbo commercial jets.” The two boosters will generate 75 percent of the blast that lifts the missile and its payload off the ground. But this is only part of the rocket’s power. There’s also the 212-foot-tall core stage—the big orange part of the rocket. On launch day, it will be filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 of liquid oxygen, which will power the four engines on the bottom. All that fuel and engineering translates into a load of power. Within 8.5 minutes of launch, the SLS and the Orion capsule it carries will be traveling at speeds of about 17,000 miles per hour.

What is the Orion capsule?

I know, another name. So SLS will carry a spacecraft called Orion. (In the photos, it’s the white part on top of the rocket.) It is in no way related to the Orion gaming gadget. Photo: Loren Grush/The Verge Orion is designed for missions beyond Earth orbit, with possible destinations the Moon or Mars. It has a high-gloss finish that will help it cope with the extremes of space, a next-generation heat shield to deal with atmospheric re-entry and a launch abort system that could launch astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during launch . In space, it can support four people on a mission for 21 days. Orion flew into space before on a test flight in 2014. Since then, many tests have gone through in preparation for this next flight, which has been delayed many, many times. (More on those delays later.) Back in 2020, it looked like it might be delayed again when some engineers discovered a problem with a power component for the spacecraft. The repair attempt would take months and they have backup systems available, so they will fly the spacecraft as is.

Will there be people inside Orion?

No. There will be three mannequins strapped in, which look terrifying to varying degrees. One is named Commander Moonikin Campos and will wear one of the flight suits that astronauts will wear on future missions. It will be joined by the limbless Helga and Zohar, which will carry radiation detectors to figure out how much radiation the astronauts might be exposed to during a trip to the Moon. Zohar will wear a vest that can protect against radiation. Helga won’t. Good luck, Helga.
Helga and Zohar bound to their places in Orion. Commander Moonikin Campos’ feet are visible at upper left. Image: NASA/Frank Michaux One of the big reasons there won’t be any astronauts on board is that this whole launch is a giant test flight. It’s the first time the SLS is making its big space debut, and putting people on a rocket before they see if it can actually work is an extremely poor choice. (NASA very briefly considered doing just that, then decided not to.) Instead, Artemis I will be solely concerned with testing how well Orion and SLS perform and pushing them to their limits before humans get on board.

What is Artemis I?

Oh boy, another name! Artemis I is the mission carried by SLS and Orion. Its primary goal is to ensure that Orion can work in space and that it can deliver astronauts safely back to Earth after the mission is complete. As a bonus, it will fly farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed for humans has ever flown, reaching a distance of 280,000 miles from Earth. During its mission, it will travel a total of about 1.3 million miles, heading toward the Moon and then orbiting the Moon for several days before returning to Earth. The maps in this mission look like an extremely large and very messy figure 8. The trajectory of Artemis I. Image: NASA Are there other Artemis quests? Yes! If all goes well with Artemis I, NASA will move on to Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS / Orion combination. It’s also the first manned mission back to the Moon since the Apollo era, but the astronauts aboard won’t land on the Moon – they’ll just orbit around for a while and then return to Earth. NASA’s ultimate goal is to land the first woman on the Moon during the Artemis III mission, which is still in the works. In August, NASA announced several potential landing sites near the Moon’s South Pole. Yes, that rings a bell. How long has this been in the works? The Artemis program? Since 2019, when then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA was heading back to the Moon and would get there by 2024. Fun event! It got its name because in mythology, Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister, and there’s just a ton of nostalgia for Apollo’s missions, for better or worse. So will they return to the Moon by 2024? No way. They’re shooting for 2025 at this point, but that’s still pretty ambitious. What about the SLS project? I feel like I’ve been hearing this for a while. You certainly have. Its origins date back to around 2010, when the US was moving away from the space shuttle and towards other modes of space transportation. Parts of it started out as a project called Constellation that was canceled because it was too expensive. It was then revived as the SLS in 2010, with a target to launch in 2017. This fell through to 2018 and continued to slip as the project was severely delayed and over budget. For a full look at the story, see our story here. But… are they ready to leave now? Well, we all hope so. The dress rehearsal for this launch was interrupted in June due to a hydrogen leak, but engineers thought they had fixed all the last-minute tasks for the rocket, and NASA decided it was a go for its first launch attempt on August 29. Then, on the day of the launch, NASA engineers were unable to get one of the rocket’s four engines into the correct temperature range, so the launch was eventually scrubbed. The space agency is “not ready to give up” and currently hopes to launch on September 3 at 2:17 p.m. ET. What else will be on board? In addition to Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos, there will be a few other science experiments on Artemis I. During the mission, the spacecraft will deploy 10 small satellites called CubeSats. Some will map ice on the lunar surface, some will deploy a giant solar sail and head for an asteroid, and some will attempt to land on the Moon. On board, there will also be a science experiment that will take yeast where yeast has never gone before in an effort to study radiation in deep space. Shaun the sheep poses with a model of the Orion capsule Image: ESA / Aardman Also inside the capsule will be a plush sheep named Shaun. Also, Snoopy. Both Shaun and Snoopy will serve as zero gravity markers, floating around Orion once it reaches microgravity.

When is the SLS released?

The launch window opens on September 3 at 2:17 PM ET. NASA will have a live broadcast on Monday, with coverage of the launch beginning early Saturday morning. Update 9/1/2022 10:30 AM ET: This article has been updated with information about the Aug. 29 scrub and the upcoming Sept. 3 launch window.

title: “Nasa S Artemis I Mission Is Set To Launch The Sls Spacecraft To The Moon Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-27” author: “Minnie Reinke”

Consider this SLS cheat sheet as NASA prepares for its big launch on September 3rd.

What is SLS?

It represents the Space Launch System. It seems like a very boring name. Is. But it’s also highly functional, as it refers to a system for launching things into space. What kinds of things can SLS launch? So many things! This version of the SLS has four large rocket engines and two solid-state boosters and can carry about 27 metric tons to the general vicinity of the Moon. That’s more than the space shuttle could carry to low earth orbit, but less than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket could carry to the Moon. Future versions of the SLS will be able to carry even more. SLS and Orion roll onto the launch pad Image: NASA / Kim Shiflett Wow, how is he going to do that? It will go off like a £5.75m firework. Those boosters — the twin white cylinders on either side of the rocket — are 17 stories tall and filled with a solid rocket fuel called polybutadiene acrylonitrile. They make six tons of this fuel every second, according to NASA. In case you were wondering what this is about jumbo jets, NASA has you covered. Each “produces more thrust than 14 four-engine jumbo commercial jets.” The two boosters will generate 75 percent of the blast that lifts the missile and its payload off the ground. But this is only part of the rocket’s power. There’s also the 212-foot-tall core stage—the big orange part of the rocket. On launch day, it will be filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 of liquid oxygen, which will power the four engines on the bottom. All that fuel and engineering translates into a load of power. Within 8.5 minutes of launch, the SLS and the Orion capsule it carries will be traveling at speeds of about 17,000 miles per hour.

What is the Orion capsule?

I know, another name. So SLS will carry a spacecraft called Orion. (In the photos, it’s the white part on top of the rocket.) It is in no way related to the Orion gaming gadget. Photo: Loren Grush/The Verge Orion is designed for missions beyond Earth orbit, with possible destinations the Moon or Mars. It has a high-gloss finish that will help it cope with the extremes of space, a next-generation heat shield to deal with atmospheric re-entry and a launch abort system that could launch astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during launch . In space, it can support four people on a mission for 21 days. Orion flew into space before on a test flight in 2014. Since then, many tests have gone through in preparation for this next flight, which has been delayed many, many times. (More on those delays later.) Back in 2020, it looked like it might be delayed again when some engineers discovered a problem with a power component for the spacecraft. The repair attempt would take months and they have backup systems available, so they will fly the spacecraft as is.

Will there be people inside Orion?

No. There will be three mannequins strapped in, which look terrifying to varying degrees. One is named Commander Moonikin Campos and will wear one of the flight suits that astronauts will wear on future missions. It will be joined by the limbless Helga and Zohar, which will carry radiation detectors to figure out how much radiation the astronauts might be exposed to during a trip to the Moon. Zohar will wear a vest that can protect against radiation. Helga won’t. Good luck, Helga.
Helga and Zohar bound to their places in Orion. Commander Moonikin Campos’ feet are visible at upper left. Image: NASA/Frank Michaux One of the big reasons there won’t be any astronauts on board is that this whole launch is a giant test flight. It’s the first time the SLS is making its big space debut, and putting people on a rocket before they see if it can actually work is an extremely poor choice. (NASA very briefly considered doing just that, then decided not to.) Instead, Artemis I will be solely concerned with testing how well Orion and SLS perform and pushing them to their limits before humans get on board.

What is Artemis I?

Oh boy, another name! Artemis I is the mission carried by SLS and Orion. Its primary goal is to ensure that Orion can work in space and that it can deliver astronauts safely back to Earth after the mission is complete. As a bonus, it will fly farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed for humans has ever flown, reaching a distance of 280,000 miles from Earth. During its mission, it will travel a total of about 1.3 million miles, heading toward the Moon and then orbiting the Moon for several days before returning to Earth. The maps in this mission look like an extremely large and very messy figure 8. The trajectory of Artemis I. Image: NASA Are there other Artemis quests? Yes! If all goes well with Artemis I, NASA will move on to Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS / Orion combination. It’s also the first manned mission back to the Moon since the Apollo era, but the astronauts aboard won’t land on the Moon – they’ll just orbit around for a while and then return to Earth. NASA’s ultimate goal is to land the first woman on the Moon during the Artemis III mission, which is still in the works. In August, NASA announced several potential landing sites near the Moon’s South Pole. Yes, that rings a bell. How long has this been in the works? The Artemis program? Since 2019, when then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA was heading back to the Moon and would get there by 2024. Fun event! It got its name because in mythology, Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister, and there’s just a ton of nostalgia for Apollo’s missions, for better or worse. So will they return to the Moon by 2024? No way. They’re shooting for 2025 at this point, but that’s still pretty ambitious. What about the SLS project? I feel like I’ve been hearing this for a while. You certainly have. Its origins date back to around 2010, when the US was moving away from the space shuttle and towards other modes of space transportation. Parts of it started out as a project called Constellation that was canceled because it was too expensive. It was then revived as the SLS in 2010, with a target to launch in 2017. This fell through to 2018 and continued to slip as the project was severely delayed and over budget. For a full look at the story, see our story here. But… are they ready to leave now? Well, we all hope so. The dress rehearsal for this launch was interrupted in June due to a hydrogen leak, but engineers thought they had fixed all the last-minute tasks for the rocket, and NASA decided it was a go for its first launch attempt on August 29. Then, on the day of the launch, NASA engineers were unable to get one of the rocket’s four engines into the correct temperature range, so the launch was eventually scrubbed. The space agency is “not ready to give up” and currently hopes to launch on September 3 at 2:17 p.m. ET. What else will be on board? In addition to Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos, there will be a few other science experiments on Artemis I. During the mission, the spacecraft will deploy 10 small satellites called CubeSats. Some will map ice on the lunar surface, some will deploy a giant solar sail and head for an asteroid, and some will attempt to land on the Moon. On board, there will also be a science experiment that will take yeast where yeast has never gone before in an effort to study radiation in deep space. Shaun the sheep poses with a model of the Orion capsule Image: ESA / Aardman Also inside the capsule will be a plush sheep named Shaun. Also, Snoopy. Both Shaun and Snoopy will serve as zero gravity markers, floating around Orion once it reaches microgravity.

When is the SLS released?

The launch window opens on September 3 at 2:17 PM ET. NASA will have a live broadcast on Monday, with coverage of the launch beginning early Saturday morning. Update 9/1/2022 10:30 AM ET: This article has been updated with information about the Aug. 29 scrub and the upcoming Sept. 3 launch window.

title: “Nasa S Artemis I Mission Is Set To Launch The Sls Spacecraft To The Moon Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-02” author: “Diane Brown”

Consider this SLS cheat sheet as NASA prepares for its big launch on September 3rd.

What is SLS?

It represents the Space Launch System. It seems like a very boring name. Is. But it’s also highly functional, as it refers to a system for launching things into space. What kinds of things can SLS launch? So many things! This version of the SLS has four large rocket engines and two solid-state boosters and can carry about 27 metric tons to the general vicinity of the Moon. That’s more than the space shuttle could carry to low earth orbit, but less than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket could carry to the Moon. Future versions of the SLS will be able to carry even more. SLS and Orion roll onto the launch pad Image: NASA / Kim Shiflett Wow, how is he going to do that? It will go off like a £5.75m firework. Those boosters — the twin white cylinders on either side of the rocket — are 17 stories tall and filled with a solid rocket fuel called polybutadiene acrylonitrile. They make six tons of this fuel every second, according to NASA. In case you were wondering what this is about jumbo jets, NASA has you covered. Each “produces more thrust than 14 four-engine jumbo commercial jets.” The two boosters will generate 75 percent of the blast that lifts the missile and its payload off the ground. But this is only part of the rocket’s power. There’s also the 212-foot-tall core stage—the big orange part of the rocket. On launch day, it will be filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 of liquid oxygen, which will power the four engines on the bottom. All that fuel and engineering translates into a load of power. Within 8.5 minutes of launch, the SLS and the Orion capsule it carries will be traveling at speeds of about 17,000 miles per hour.

What is the Orion capsule?

I know, another name. So SLS will carry a spacecraft called Orion. (In the photos, it’s the white part on top of the rocket.) It is in no way related to the Orion gaming gadget. Photo: Loren Grush/The Verge Orion is designed for missions beyond Earth orbit, with possible destinations the Moon or Mars. It has a high-gloss finish that will help it cope with the extremes of space, a next-generation heat shield to deal with atmospheric re-entry and a launch abort system that could launch astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during launch . In space, it can support four people on a mission for 21 days. Orion flew into space before on a test flight in 2014. Since then, many tests have gone through in preparation for this next flight, which has been delayed many, many times. (More on those delays later.) Back in 2020, it looked like it might be delayed again when some engineers discovered a problem with a power component for the spacecraft. The repair attempt would take months and they have backup systems available, so they will fly the spacecraft as is.

Will there be people inside Orion?

No. There will be three mannequins strapped in, which look terrifying to varying degrees. One is named Commander Moonikin Campos and will wear one of the flight suits that astronauts will wear on future missions. It will be joined by the limbless Helga and Zohar, which will carry radiation detectors to figure out how much radiation the astronauts might be exposed to during a trip to the Moon. Zohar will wear a vest that can protect against radiation. Helga won’t. Good luck, Helga.
Helga and Zohar bound to their places in Orion. Commander Moonikin Campos’ feet are visible at upper left. Image: NASA/Frank Michaux One of the big reasons there won’t be any astronauts on board is that this whole launch is a giant test flight. It’s the first time the SLS is making its big space debut, and putting people on a rocket before they see if it can actually work is an extremely poor choice. (NASA very briefly considered doing just that, then decided not to.) Instead, Artemis I will be solely concerned with testing how well Orion and SLS perform and pushing them to their limits before humans get on board.

What is Artemis I?

Oh boy, another name! Artemis I is the mission carried by SLS and Orion. Its primary goal is to ensure that Orion can work in space and that it can deliver astronauts safely back to Earth after the mission is complete. As a bonus, it will fly farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed for humans has ever flown, reaching a distance of 280,000 miles from Earth. During its mission, it will travel a total of about 1.3 million miles, heading toward the Moon and then orbiting the Moon for several days before returning to Earth. The maps in this mission look like an extremely large and very messy figure 8. The trajectory of Artemis I. Image: NASA Are there other Artemis quests? Yes! If all goes well with Artemis I, NASA will move on to Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS / Orion combination. It’s also the first manned mission back to the Moon since the Apollo era, but the astronauts aboard won’t land on the Moon – they’ll just orbit around for a while and then return to Earth. NASA’s ultimate goal is to land the first woman on the Moon during the Artemis III mission, which is still in the works. In August, NASA announced several potential landing sites near the Moon’s South Pole. Yes, that rings a bell. How long has this been in the works? The Artemis program? Since 2019, when then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA was heading back to the Moon and would get there by 2024. Fun event! It got its name because in mythology, Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister, and there’s just a ton of nostalgia for Apollo’s missions, for better or worse. So will they return to the Moon by 2024? No way. They’re shooting for 2025 at this point, but that’s still pretty ambitious. What about the SLS project? I feel like I’ve been hearing this for a while. You certainly have. Its origins date back to around 2010, when the US was moving away from the space shuttle and towards other modes of space transportation. Parts of it started out as a project called Constellation that was canceled because it was too expensive. It was then revived as the SLS in 2010, with a target to launch in 2017. This fell through to 2018 and continued to slip as the project was severely delayed and over budget. For a full look at the story, see our story here. But… are they ready to leave now? Well, we all hope so. The dress rehearsal for this launch was interrupted in June due to a hydrogen leak, but engineers thought they had fixed all the last-minute tasks for the rocket, and NASA decided it was a go for its first launch attempt on August 29. Then, on the day of the launch, NASA engineers were unable to get one of the rocket’s four engines into the correct temperature range, so the launch was eventually scrubbed. The space agency is “not ready to give up” and currently hopes to launch on September 3 at 2:17 p.m. ET. What else will be on board? In addition to Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos, there will be a few other science experiments on Artemis I. During the mission, the spacecraft will deploy 10 small satellites called CubeSats. Some will map ice on the lunar surface, some will deploy a giant solar sail and head for an asteroid, and some will attempt to land on the Moon. On board, there will also be a science experiment that will take yeast where yeast has never gone before in an effort to study radiation in deep space. Shaun the sheep poses with a model of the Orion capsule Image: ESA / Aardman Also inside the capsule will be a plush sheep named Shaun. Also, Snoopy. Both Shaun and Snoopy will serve as zero gravity markers, floating around Orion once it reaches microgravity.

When is the SLS released?

The launch window opens on September 3 at 2:17 PM ET. NASA will have a live broadcast on Monday, with coverage of the launch beginning early Saturday morning. Update 9/1/2022 10:30 AM ET: This article has been updated with information about the Aug. 29 scrub and the upcoming Sept. 3 launch window.

title: “Nasa S Artemis I Mission Is Set To Launch The Sls Spacecraft To The Moon Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-28” author: “Tami Loomis”

Consider this SLS cheat sheet as NASA prepares for its big launch on September 3rd.

What is SLS?

It represents the Space Launch System. It seems like a very boring name. Is. But it’s also highly functional, as it refers to a system for launching things into space. What kinds of things can SLS launch? So many things! This version of the SLS has four large rocket engines and two solid-state boosters and can carry about 27 metric tons to the general vicinity of the Moon. That’s more than the space shuttle could carry to low earth orbit, but less than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket could carry to the Moon. Future versions of the SLS will be able to carry even more. SLS and Orion roll onto the launch pad Image: NASA / Kim Shiflett Wow, how is he going to do that? It will go off like a £5.75m firework. Those boosters — the twin white cylinders on either side of the rocket — are 17 stories tall and filled with a solid rocket fuel called polybutadiene acrylonitrile. They make six tons of this fuel every second, according to NASA. In case you were wondering what this is about jumbo jets, NASA has you covered. Each “produces more thrust than 14 four-engine jumbo commercial jets.” The two boosters will generate 75 percent of the blast that lifts the missile and its payload off the ground. But this is only part of the rocket’s power. There’s also the 212-foot-tall core stage—the big orange part of the rocket. On launch day, it will be filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 of liquid oxygen, which will power the four engines on the bottom. All that fuel and engineering translates into a load of power. Within 8.5 minutes of launch, the SLS and the Orion capsule it carries will be traveling at speeds of about 17,000 miles per hour.

What is the Orion capsule?

I know, another name. So SLS will carry a spacecraft called Orion. (In the photos, it’s the white part on top of the rocket.) It is in no way related to the Orion gaming gadget. Photo: Loren Grush/The Verge Orion is designed for missions beyond Earth orbit, with possible destinations the Moon or Mars. It has a high-gloss finish that will help it cope with the extremes of space, a next-generation heat shield to deal with atmospheric re-entry and a launch abort system that could launch astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during launch . In space, it can support four people on a mission for 21 days. Orion flew into space before on a test flight in 2014. Since then, many tests have gone through in preparation for this next flight, which has been delayed many, many times. (More on those delays later.) Back in 2020, it looked like it might be delayed again when some engineers discovered a problem with a power component for the spacecraft. The repair attempt would take months and they have backup systems available, so they will fly the spacecraft as is.

Will there be people inside Orion?

No. There will be three mannequins strapped in, which look terrifying to varying degrees. One is named Commander Moonikin Campos and will wear one of the flight suits that astronauts will wear on future missions. It will be joined by the limbless Helga and Zohar, which will carry radiation detectors to figure out how much radiation the astronauts might be exposed to during a trip to the Moon. Zohar will wear a vest that can protect against radiation. Helga won’t. Good luck, Helga.
Helga and Zohar bound to their places in Orion. Commander Moonikin Campos’ feet are visible at upper left. Image: NASA/Frank Michaux One of the big reasons there won’t be any astronauts on board is that this whole launch is a giant test flight. It’s the first time the SLS is making its big space debut, and putting people on a rocket before they see if it can actually work is an extremely poor choice. (NASA very briefly considered doing just that, then decided not to.) Instead, Artemis I will be solely concerned with testing how well Orion and SLS perform and pushing them to their limits before humans get on board.

What is Artemis I?

Oh boy, another name! Artemis I is the mission carried by SLS and Orion. Its primary goal is to ensure that Orion can work in space and that it can deliver astronauts safely back to Earth after the mission is complete. As a bonus, it will fly farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed for humans has ever flown, reaching a distance of 280,000 miles from Earth. During its mission, it will travel a total of about 1.3 million miles, heading toward the Moon and then orbiting the Moon for several days before returning to Earth. The maps in this mission look like an extremely large and very messy figure 8. The trajectory of Artemis I. Image: NASA Are there other Artemis quests? Yes! If all goes well with Artemis I, NASA will move on to Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS / Orion combination. It’s also the first manned mission back to the Moon since the Apollo era, but the astronauts aboard won’t land on the Moon – they’ll just orbit around for a while and then return to Earth. NASA’s ultimate goal is to land the first woman on the Moon during the Artemis III mission, which is still in the works. In August, NASA announced several potential landing sites near the Moon’s South Pole. Yes, that rings a bell. How long has this been in the works? The Artemis program? Since 2019, when then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA was heading back to the Moon and would get there by 2024. Fun event! It got its name because in mythology, Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister, and there’s just a ton of nostalgia for Apollo’s missions, for better or worse. So will they return to the Moon by 2024? No way. They’re shooting for 2025 at this point, but that’s still pretty ambitious. What about the SLS project? I feel like I’ve been hearing this for a while. You certainly have. Its origins date back to around 2010, when the US was moving away from the space shuttle and towards other modes of space transportation. Parts of it started out as a project called Constellation that was canceled because it was too expensive. It was then revived as the SLS in 2010, with a target to launch in 2017. This fell through to 2018 and continued to slip as the project was severely delayed and over budget. For a full look at the story, see our story here. But… are they ready to leave now? Well, we all hope so. The dress rehearsal for this launch was interrupted in June due to a hydrogen leak, but engineers thought they had fixed all the last-minute tasks for the rocket, and NASA decided it was a go for its first launch attempt on August 29. Then, on the day of the launch, NASA engineers were unable to get one of the rocket’s four engines into the correct temperature range, so the launch was eventually scrubbed. The space agency is “not ready to give up” and currently hopes to launch on September 3 at 2:17 p.m. ET. What else will be on board? In addition to Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos, there will be a few other science experiments on Artemis I. During the mission, the spacecraft will deploy 10 small satellites called CubeSats. Some will map ice on the lunar surface, some will deploy a giant solar sail and head for an asteroid, and some will attempt to land on the Moon. On board, there will also be a science experiment that will take yeast where yeast has never gone before in an effort to study radiation in deep space. Shaun the sheep poses with a model of the Orion capsule Image: ESA / Aardman Also inside the capsule will be a plush sheep named Shaun. Also, Snoopy. Both Shaun and Snoopy will serve as zero gravity markers, floating around Orion once it reaches microgravity.

When is the SLS released?

The launch window opens on September 3 at 2:17 PM ET. NASA will have a live broadcast on Monday, with coverage of the launch beginning early Saturday morning. Update 9/1/2022 10:30 AM ET: This article has been updated with information about the Aug. 29 scrub and the upcoming Sept. 3 launch window.