NASA's giant rocket completes slow roll towards Artemis II moon voyage

Earliest possible launch date to test life-support system in deep space is Feb 6

- Kenneth Chang

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said on the morning of Jan 17 that a few days earlier, he looked up and saw the crescent moon in the light of the sunrise.

He thought about the far side of the moon - the part that is always hidden from Earth.

"You just think about all the landmarks we've been studying on that far side and how amazing that will look," he said at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The former Navy captain is the commander of a mission called Artemis II, and the giant rocket that will send him on the trip that will provide him with those views was on the move - just not very fast or very far, yet.

On Jan 17, a mammoth crawler began transporting the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle, the Orion capsule and the launch tower - 6.3 million kg altogether - from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad 6.7km away.

"This is the start of a very long journey,’ said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, as he and the four crew members of Artemis II talked with reporters while the rocket moved, almost imperceptibly, in the background.

The SLS crawler is one of two that NASA built in the 1960s to carry the Saturn V rockets during the Apollo programme and later modified for the space shuttles. Its peak speed is less than 1.6kmh, and it takes half a day for its trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is essentially a large garage where the pieces of the 98m-tall rocket were put together.

It reached the launchpad at 6.42pm Eastern time. Now, final preparations will begin - hooking up connections for electrical power and propellants and performing checks of key systems.