The Artemis II rocket has reached its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, ready for a historic journey. Over the weekend, engineers slowly and carefully rolled the nearly 100-metre-tall Space Launch System rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B. The 6.5-km journey took around 12 hours and was carried out using NASA’s crawler-transporter, which has been moving rockets to launch pads for over 50 years.
Standing nearly 100 m tall, the Space Launch System will weigh approximately 2.6 million kg once fully fuelled and ready for liftoff. At its top sits the Orion spacecraft, bearing the ESA and NASA logos and designed to carry four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time humans have ventured towards the Moon in over 50 years.
Their journey depends on our European Service Module, built by industry from more than 10 countries across Europe. This powerhouse will take over once Orion separates from the rocket, supplying electricity from its four seven-metre long solar arrays, providing air and water for the crew, and performing key propulsion burns during the mission, including the critical trans-lunar injection that sends the spacecraft on its trajectory towards the Moon.
European engineers will be at mission control around the clock, monitoring operations from ESA’s ESTEC site in the Netherlands and alongside NASA teams in the Mision Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The European Service Module’s main engine carries a unique legacy. Originally flown on six Space Shuttle missions between 2000 and 2002, the engine was refurbished and tested after two decades in storage and installed on the second European Service Module at Airbus in Bremen, Germany, giving this historic piece of hardware a new role in deep-space exploration.
The next major milestone is the wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will practise fuelling the rocket and running through the launch countdown, bringing Artemis II one step closer to launch.