With a deafening noise, NASA's new mega-rocket, the most powerful in the world, took off on Wednesday from Florida, heading for the Moon, for the first unmanned mission of NASA's new flagship program, Artemis.

The rocket, named SLS, rose in the night like a giant ball of fire at 1:47 a.m. local time (6:47 GMT), from the Kennedy Space Center.

The third launch attempt will therefore have been the right one, after two tests canceled at the last minute this summer due to technical problems, then two hurricanes having further postponed take-off by several weeks.

A real success for NASA

The Artemis 1 mission should last twenty-five days in total, and many stages could still pose problems, but the first take-off of this 98-meter-tall giant, in development for more than a decade, already represents already a real success for NASA.

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, this test flight, which will circumnavigate the Moon without landing there and without an astronaut on board, should confirm that the vehicle is safe for a future crew.

It marks the great start of the Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon.

The goal is to establish a lasting human presence there, in preparation for a trip to Mars.

Hydrogen leak detected

As with two previous failed launch attempts this summer, filling the rocket with its cryogenic fuel - more than 2.7 million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen - gave the rocket a hard time. NASA.

A hydrogen leak, ultra-flammable, was detected in the evening at the foot of the rocket, and required the dispatch of a team of technicians to the launch pad to repair it, stopping preparations for about an hour. and causing a slight delay on the initial take-off time.


Just after takeoff, crews from the control center in Houston, Texas, took over.

After two minutes, the two white boosters fell back into the Atlantic.

After eight minutes, the main stage in turn detached.

Then, around 1h30 after takeoff, a final push from the upper stage will put the Orion capsule on its way to the Moon, which it will reach in a few days.

There, it will be placed in a distant orbit for about a week, and will venture up to 64,000 km behind the Moon -- a record for a habitable capsule.

Finally, Orion will begin its return to Earth, testing its heat shield, the largest ever built.

It will have to withstand a temperature half as hot as the surface of the Sun as it passes through the atmosphere.

Landing in the Pacific Ocean is scheduled for December 11.

A manned flight to Mars in the late 2030s

After the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo missions, then the space shuttles, SLS must bring NASA into a new era of human exploration - this time from deep space.

In 2024, Artémis 2 must take astronauts to the Moon, still without landing there.

An honor reserved for the crew of Artemis 3, in 2025 at the earliest.

NASA then plans one mission per year, to build a space station in orbit around the Moon, and a base on its South Pole.

The goal is to test new equipment there: suits, vehicle, mini-power station, use of ice water on site… All in order to establish a lasting human presence there.

This experiment should prepare a manned flight to Mars, perhaps at the end of the 2030s. This trip, of a completely different scale, would take at least two years round trip.

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