Fifty-three years after humans first walked on the moon, NASA is kicking off its ambitious Artemis program to return us there, starting with an uncrewed launch of a massive new rocket on Monday.
The Artemis I mission scheduled Monday morning will see the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the second flight of the Orion capsule. It’s been a long road to the launch pad.
SLS’s origin story stretches all the way back to 2010, when Congress directed NASA to develop a rocket as a follow-on to the space shuttle. If the rocket’s appearance looks familiar — particularly the two solid boosters that flank the central liquid hydrogen tank — that’s because it borrows much of its technology …
