Artemis, the rocket that will take a woman to the Moon, is presented at a launch rehearsal It is considered the most powerful rocket in the world and its first mission, Artemis I, is scheduled for this year.
By Eduardo Scheffler Zawadzki Edited by Eduardo Scheffler Zawadzki
This article was translated from our Spanish edition.
The rocket is called Artemis and is already mounted on a huge "tracked" vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Yesterday, March 17, at 5:47 p.m. local time, it left the assembly building mounted on the transporter and was taken to the launch pad as the first part of a dress rehearsal before its actual launch. in the summer of this year.
The transportation of the huge rocket lasted about twelve hours and for the first time we could see it outside the hangar in which it was built. Considered the most powerful rocket in the world , Artemis is attached to Orion , the capsule in which the astronauts will travel. Together, both devices are 101.2 meters tall and weigh more than 2.5 million kilograms. On April 3, the second part of the test will be carried out, which consists of filling the fuel tanks with 2.7 million hydrogen and liquid oxygen and carrying out a countdown that will stop seconds before the rocket engines turn on. .
The Artemis I mission is scheduled for this year and it is an unmanned flight to ensure the proper functioning of the equipment. Artemis II is scheduled for May 2024 and consists of a manned trip to orbit the Earth's natural satellite. It is estimated that it will be sometime in 2025 when Artemis III will take humans back to the Moon.
ABOUT ARTEMIS AND SPACE MISSIONS
In Greek mythology Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the Moon and nature. Daughter of Zeus and Leto, she is the sister of Apollo and is one of the twelve deities that inhabit Olympus. She is depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows and NASA chose her name for their next (and ambitious) space missions that have as one of their goals to take the first woman and the first person of color to the moon to keep exploring its surface. Artemis is an international program led by NASA, but in which, in addition to the United States, the space agencies of Japan, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Mexico also participate.
