NASA's brand new SLS rocket ready for March 18 roll out on launch pad; watch live here

The massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which would kickstart human endeavours to the Moon, is ready to roll out onto the launch pad in the early hours of March 18. Currently at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the rocket mounted with the Orion spacecraft would be brought out to Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The integrated SLS rocket and Orion is set to launch this summer under the uncrewed Artemis I mission of NASA's Artemis program.

When and where to watch the rocket rollout?

The SLS rocket would be pulled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on March 18 and the live coverage for the rollout would begin at 3:30 am (IST). Interested viewers can tune in to NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website for the live telecast. The rollout would involve carrying the integrated launch vehicle from the VAB to the LaunchPad 39B which is located a little over six kilometers apart. 

According to NASA, the engineers would conduct wet dress rehearsals, of the rocket and the spacecraft, which includes loading the SLS propellant tanks and conducting a launch countdown. On March 11, NASA had released a video showing the crawler-transporter 2 (CT-2) slowly crawling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The CT-2 is the vehicle that will carry the rocket to the launch pad.

One of the agency's two crawler-transport vehicles, the CT-2 is built to carry massive objects like rockets. The vehicle weighs about 2.9 million kilograms and is roughly the size of a baseball infield. Interestingly, the rocket carrier gets its name owing to its slow speed as it moves at a top speed of 1.6 kilometers per hour fully loaded and 3.2 kilometers per hour unloaded.

The Artemis plan

The Artemis I mission, targeted for late May 2022, will pave the way for NASA's return to the Moon in over five decades. While the first Artemis launch will be uncrewed, NASA has planned to launch humans around the Moon in Artemis II which is scheduled no earlier than 2024 if everything goes as per the plan. It is Artemis III when astronauts would land on the lunar surface again, no earlier than 2025, although the date could slip to 2026 owing to some issues highlighted by NASA's inspector general Paul Martin.