[imagesource: NASA]

NASA landed the first man on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

The program that led to that historic event was named after a god of Greek mythology, Apollo.

It’s therefore fitting that its next moon mission is called Artemis – Apollo’s twin sister and the goddess of the Moon.

With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.

The most innovative of those technologies is the Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket ship described by the space agency as, per Live Science, “the most powerful rocket ever built”.

The SLS is due for ignition for the first time on January 17, 2021.

During this first run, only the liquid fuel engines at the core of the rocket will be tested, without the solid fuel boosters that will one day carry SLS into orbit, but it still promises to be pretty spectacular.

At 322 feet tall (98 meters), the SLS stands a head shorter than the 363-foot (110 m) Saturn V rockets that carried astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s.

But this rocket is substantially more powerful, producing 15% more thrust during liftoff and ascent.

It is set to make history as the most powerful rocket ever ignited on Earth.

Some background on the program:

Yep, Artemis is one small step towards humans living in space, and one giant leap towards the first manned mission to Mars.

The ignition test will cap off an eight-part testing program NASA has dubbed the SLS “Green Run”.

Image: NASA

NASA completed the wet dress rehearsal, the seventh test of the SLS rocket core stage Green Run test series, at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on December 20, 2020.

During the test, 733 000 gallons filled the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tank:

A key aspect of this test was to load the propellant and then to replenish it as the gas naturally boils off.

When complete, if everything goes right, the SLS will have the capacity to carry more than 27 tons (24,000 kilograms) to the moon — much more than the 24 tons (22,000 kg) the Space Shuttle hauled into low-Earth orbit, though technically less than the Saturn V carried to the moon.

We’ll no doubt be given the opportunity to watch the eighth instalment of the Green Run live, so keep an eye on NASA’s YouTube channel.

In the meantime, here’s an overview of NASA’s plans for the year, including a visual of it test-firing its space launch systems core stage at the 15-second mark:

Chills.

[source:livescience]