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The $93-billion plan to put astronauts back on the Moon

The world’s most powerful rocket will make a trip around the Moon in 2022 — a step towards landing people there in 2025, and part of the US Artemis programme.
  1. Alexandra Witze
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The Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Tests of NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket, seen here on its launch pad, revealed problems that have set back its first mission. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

On the morning of 17 March, the world’s largest set of doors rolled open to reveal an aerospace marvel at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. There, in NASA’s biggest building, stood its newest rocket — the most powerful ever built and nearly 100 metres tall. That evening, an enormous wheeled platform rolled slowly out of the building, carrying the mega-rocket through the coastal night towards its launch pad.

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Nature 605, 212-216 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01253-6

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