When NASA launches its Artemis 1 moon mission today (March 17), most eyes will be on the giant rocket that will be used for the first time. The machine carrying it is a marvel in its own right.
On Artemis 1, NASA will send an uncrewed capsule to the moon. The mission is expected to lift off in May or June, but the SLS-Orion duo will trek to the pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida today for testing, including a crucial wet dress rehearsal.
You can watch the Artemis 1 moon rocket roll out live on Space.com. The sun sets at luminary time, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at luminary hour, at It takes up to 12 hours for the SLS rocket to make the trek to the pad.
The Artemis 1 SLS is 322 feet tall and weighs over five million pounds. It will travel about 4 miles during today's launch, which will start at the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building and end about 11 hours later at Launch Pad 39B.
NASA's latest Artemis 1 moon mission is live.
It takes a beastly machine to haul such a huge load over that distance, and NASA's crawler-transporter 2 is certainly a beast.
The associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. said during a news conference on Monday that the crawler was the most phenomenal thing he had ever seen.
One of the two crawlers that were built to support the Apollo moon missions is theCT-2. The machines are 131 feet long by 114 feet wide and weigh more than 6 million pounds. The crawlers drive on treads. NASA officials wrote in a feature story that each of the 57 shoes that make up the crawler weighs over 2000 pounds.
The two vehicles have a top speed of 1 mph (1.6 kph) when loaded and 2 mph (3 kph) when unburdened. According to a NASA fact sheet, CT-2 burns about 165 gallons of diesel fuel for every mile it travels.
The Skylab space station program, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and the space shuttle program were supported by the crawlers.
After the shuttles retired, NASA upgraded and modified the CT-2 to aid their efforts to return people to the moon and then get them to Mars. The first flight of SLS, the rocket that will get NASA astronauts to deep-space destinations, and the first mission in the agency's Artemis program, which is targeting a crewed lunar landing, will be a huge step in achieving those goals.
It will not bring CT-2 out of the shadows. The SLS mobile launch tower has been hauled to and from Pad 39B by the crawler over the past few years.
NASA officials said in the fact sheet that the vehicle has traveled a total of 2,365 miles. It is an impressive tally, given that the machine only travels 8 miles per trip.
According to the 2015 NASA feature, the odometer on the CT-1 reads 1,960 miles. After the shuttles retired, that machine was earmarked for use by private companies. The vehicle hasn't done much driving recently, so its fate is uncertain, as the plans haven't yet come to fruition.
The Artemis 1 SLS and Orion will stay on the pad for roughly a month after today. NASA officials have said that technicians will likely perform a wet dress rehearsal about halfway through that stretch.
After their time on the pad is over, SLS and Orion will head back to the VAB for further testing and processing, and then they will be on their way to the Artemis 1 launch.
Mike Wall is the author of Out There, a book about the search for alien life. You can follow him on social media. Follow us on social media.
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