NASA’s new moon rocket reaches launch pad for flight around moon

NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis 1 rocket with its Orion crew capsule stands on launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, August 17, 2022 [Joe Skipper/Reuters]

NASA’s new moon rocket arrived at the launch pad Wednesday in advance of its debut flight in less than two weeks.

The 98-metre (322-foot) rocket emerged from its mammoth hangar late Tuesday night, drawing crowds of Kennedy Space Center workers. Moving at less than 1.6kph (1mph), it took nearly 10 hours for the massive rocket to make the four-mile trip to the pad, pulling up at sunrise Wednesday.