As the sun rose on Saturday, January 17, a crowd gathered at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to watch the long-awaited sight: the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket that would support the Artemis 2 lunar mission as it made its way to the launch pad.
After leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building, the SLS began the 12-hour, 4-mile journey to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mounted on top of Tracked Transport Vehicle 2, the giant rocket moves at just 1 mile per hour, including slowing down hills and turns.
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“I was involved with the Artemis 1 mission…” John Honeycutt, chairman of the Artemis 2 mission management team, said at a press conference ahead of the launch. “This time it feels different. Putting astronauts on a rocket and taking astronauts around the moon — that will be our first step toward a sustained lunar presence.”
No earlier than February 6, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission experts Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will blast off on a giant rocket and take the Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the moon.
“Why are we doing this? We’re doing this to deliver on a promise,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a January 17 press conference. “A promise to the American people that we will return to the moon. A promise to all the pioneers of the 1960s…the engineers, the scientists, the astronauts, the researchers who laid the foundation for the foundation we stand on now.”
The last time the public saw the rocket was on the unmanned Artemis 1 mission in November 2022.
Once the Space Launch System rocket reaches the launch pad, the team will test the systems that previously connected the rocket before launch. The next big milestone will be the wet rehearsal, which involves refueling the rocket and conducting pre-launch preparations to ensure everything is in order before the big day.
The four Artemis 2 astronauts will also visit the launch site and receive a briefing on the emergency exit system.
The historic test flight will take astronauts around the moon and will continue the Artemis III mission, which returned humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. An executive order from the current administration calls for landing no later than 2028.
Brooke Edwards is FLORIDA TODAY’s space reporter. Contact her: bedwards@floridatoday.com Or on X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared in Florida Today: NASA’s SLS rocket launches at KSC ahead of upcoming Artemis II launch