NASA's gigantic Space Launch System moon rocket, topped with an uncrewed astronaut capsule, is set to begin an hours-long crawl to its launchpad Tuesday night ahead of the behemoth's debut test flight later this month.
The 322-foot-tall rocket is scheduled to embark on its first mission to space -- without any humans -- on Aug. 29. It will be a crucial, long-delayed demonstration trip to the moon in NASA's Artemis program, the United States' multibillion-dollar effort to return humans to the lunar surface as practice for future missions to Mars., is scheduled to emerge from its assembly building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida around 9 p.m.
. It is designed to separate from the rocket in space, ferry humans toward the moon's vicinity and rendezvous with a separate spacecraft that will take astronauts down to the lunar surface. But for the Aug. 29 mission, called Artemis 1, the Orion capsule will launch atop the Space Launch System without any humans and orbit around the moon before returning to Earth for an ocean splashdown 42 days later.
If bad launch weather or a minor technical issue triggers a delay from Aug. 29, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has backup launch dates on Sept. 2 and Sept. 5.Reporting by Joey Roulette; editing by Jonathan Oatis
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