The rocket SLS is already waiting on the launch pad of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. It is the most powerful rocket ever built. It is 100 meters high and weighs about 2.6 million kilos including fuel. At the very top is packed the craft that has to go to the moon, the Orion.
The launcher should start taking off at some point between 2:33 PM and 4:33 PM Dutch time. This is the ‘launch window’. If you are unable to leave then, there are opportunities to try again on September 2 and September 5.
After launch, the craft will circle the Earth for approximately 1.5 hours at a speed of more than 28,000 kilometers per hour. Then he accelerates again, the speed goes up to more than 36,000 kilometers to escape the gravitational pull of the earth. Then the long crossing to the moon begins.
The United States is getting help from Europe and Canada to return to the moon. On subsequent missions, the astronauts sit in the front part of the Orion, which was developed and built in America. The back is from Europe. This part provides electricity, among other things. It is generated with four large solar panels from Airbus Nederland from Leiden.
Monday’s mission is called Artemis I. In ancient Greek myths, Artemis was the goddess of, among other things, the moon. She was the twin sister of Apollo. That was the name of the space program that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and ten others to the moon between 1969 and 1972. At Artemis II, around 2024, four astronauts will fly around the moon and back. At the earliest in 2025, with the mission Artemis III, humans should land on the moon again.
Monday’s launch can be followed via live streams on the websites of the space organizations NASA (United States) and ESA (Europe). In the Omniversum cinema in The Hague, the launch is projected onto the wall of the dome, on 840 square meters. Space Museum Space Expo in Noordwijk has a themed afternoon on Monday about the flight to the moon.