Prior to the behemoth’s first test flight this month, NASA’s enormous Space Launch System moon rocket, topped with an unmanned astronaut capsule, started an hours-long journey to its launchpad on Tuesday night.
The 322-foot-tall rocket is slated to launch its initial journey into space on August 29 without any human crew. It will be an important, long-awaited demonstration mission to the moon for NASA’s Artemis programme, the country’s multibillion-dollar endeavour to send people back to the moon as training for trips to Mars.
At around 10pm EDT (0200 GMT) on Tuesday, the Space Launch System, whose development over the previous ten years has been spearheaded by Boeing, left its assembly building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and started the four-mile (6-kilometer) journey to its launchpad.
