NASA has finally taken its first small step toward sending humans back to the Moon.
The Space Launch System (SLS) lifted off into Florida's early morning sky today at 1:47 A.M. EST. The massive rocket lofted the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission on a 25-day flight to the Moon, carrying with it NASA’s hopes for human deep-space exploration — from the upcoming return of astronauts to the lunar surface to our eventual first steps on Mars.
Taller than the Statue of Liberty, the SLS rose into a Florida sky that hasn’t seen the likes of such an impressive launch since 1972. That’s when Apollo 17’s Saturn V took humans to the Moon for the last time. With 8.8 million pounds of thrust, the SLS is 15 percent more powerful than the Saturn V, meaning the SLS now holds the record for the most powerful rocket ever successfully launched.
Its thrust is equivalent to nearly all the train engines in the U.S. running at once — some 25,000 of them — according to NASA. Only the Soviet N-1, meant to compete with Apollo’s Saturn V, had more thrust (some 10 million pounds), but it blew up four times.
