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At Long Last, Artemis I Launches With Flying Colors, Proves the Haters Wrong

Forget every not-nice thing everyone has ever said about the SLS rocket. At just before 1:47 a.m. EST, the main engines of the Artemis I booster rocket roared to life after nearly two months of waiting since the first series of launch attempts in late August and early September.
SLS ROcket Artemis I 17 photos
Photo: NASA/ESA
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With the pride of a nation on its back and several hundred tons of hydrogen fuel and oxidizer, the anxiety of an absolutely brutal two-month wait evaporated away into a sea of light, noise, and over 8.8 million pounds of thrust as the SLS roared to life for the very first time. In spite of every launch scrub, every wayward weather pattern, and two hurricanes back to back, there was nothing short of tears of joy from everyone at the Kennedy Space Center press site only a short distance away from Launch Complex 39B.

From here, Artemis I's Orion Crew Module is due to make a trans-Lunar injection maneuver which will send it on a circumnavigation around the Moon which will see the spacecraft reach 40,000 miles (63,373 km) behind the surface of the dark side of the Moon, an unprecedented feat of engineering which NASA hopes to re-create with a crew aboard when the Artemis II mission is due to launch sometime in May 2024.

In the meantime, you'll have to wait a little bit longer for Artemis I's splashdown than you did with the equivalent Apollo mission. When the spacecraft does return, expect it to be traveling in excess of 20,000 miles per hour (32,186.8 kph) when it meets the Earth's atmosphere once again. When it's all said and done, you better believe the wait between now and Artemis II is going to be absolutely excruciating. But hey, after five decades, what's another 18 months or so?
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