NASA, which aims to land astronauts on the moon, plans to launch an unmanned spacecraft at the end of this month and conduct a test flight to the moon. The work to move to is complete.
NASA is aiming for the first lunar exploration by astronauts since the Apollo program in the international lunar exploration program "Artemis Project", and Japan and Europe are also participating.
On the 29th of this month, as the first stage of the plan, the newly developed spacecraft "Orion" will be launched unmanned and will perform a test flight to the moon, and will be launched on the 17th at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The work to move the large rocket "SLS" = Space Launch System used for to the launch pad has been completed.
The rocket is about 98 meters long, and when it emerges from the assembly building, it is transported at a slow speed using a huge vehicle called a crawler, and it takes about 10 hours to arrive at the launch pad about 6 kilometers away.
In this test flight, three mannequins were placed on the spacecraft "Orion", and various data such as shock and radiation effects were collected for future manned flights, and about 40 days after orbiting the moon, the earth plan to return to
NASA originally aimed to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, but there was growing interest in the timing of the delay in rocket development.