NASA starts the 2.9 million kg vehicle carrying rockets

NASA's giant 50-year-old crawler vehicle will carry the SLS rocket and Orion to the launch pad next week.

On March 11, NASA's Crawler Transporter (CT-2) began to crawl slowly towards the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to pick up the Space Launch System super rocket ( SLS) and the Orion ship. The rocket and spacecraft duo will launch to the Moon this summer on the Artemis 1 mission, the first unmanned mission of the Artemis program.

The above transport activity was to prepare for the schedule on March 17 when the tracked vehicle carried the rocket over a distance of 6.4 km to launch pad 39B.

The CT-2 is one of two crawler vehicles used to transport heavy objects such as rockets and spacecraft.

The CT-2 is one of two NASA crawler vehicles that are primarily responsible for transporting heavy objects such as rockets and spacecraft. The giant carriage was as big as a football field and weighed nearly 3,000 tons. According to NASA, CT-2 moves at a maximum speed of 1.6 km / h at maximum payload and 3.2 km / h when not carrying cargo. Although CT-2 is more than 50 years old and has traveled a total of 3,758 km, NASA hopes the vehicle can operate for many more years.

The tracked vehicle's job now is to pick up SLS and Orion from the VAB and deliver the duo to the launch pad next week. The launch system will take off on the Artemis 1 mission as early as May. During this unmanned mission, the Orion will orbit the Moon. The mission will test both the ship and the SLS rocket to see if the duo can safely carry people into space.

After Artemis 1, the Artemis 2 mission, scheduled to launch in 2024, will carry astronauts around the Moon and back to Earth. The Artemis 3 mission in 2025 will bring astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972.