During 2023, 72 rockets launched into the skies regularly rumbling windows along Florida’s Space Coast proving, again, that NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with Cape Canaveral Space Force Station have been established as America’s premier multi-user spaceport. The new record shattered the previous number set only last year during which 57 rockets lifted off.
Capped by the highly successful Artemis I mission, 2022 was a landmark year for NASA. Groundbreaking research continued in Earth orbit, a new human-rated spacecraft circled the Moon, robotic exploration of Mars reached important milestones and the agency’s newest telescope revealed never-before seen images of the universe.
On the evening of Aug. 16, 2022, the most powerful rocket ever built once again rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But this time, it’s for real. The destination is the Moon.
In the decade after the first rocket lifted off into the skies above Cape Canaveral, the launch site became the focal point of America’s efforts to explore beyond Earth. To meet President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon, a expansive new site was needed. That location became NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a premier multi-user spaceport now commemorating its 60th anniversary.
The most powerful rocket ever built now is fully assembled at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and final preparations are underway to begin the agency’s most ambitious program of exploration. A series of integrated tests are planned prior to the targeted liftoff in March 2022. The Space Launch System (SLS) will send an Orion spacecraft on a mission well beyond the Moon paving the way for landing the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface.
NASA’s spacecraft designed to return astronauts to the Moon recently reached a major milestone in preparations for its first flight atop the world’s largest rocket, the Space Launch System. The Orion capsule for the agency’s Artemis I mission moved from the manufacturing and assembly stage to processing for flight. This is one of the latest steps forward for the program that will take the first woman and next man to the lunar surface.
This is the second of a two-part series on the history of commercial flight. For years, aerospace corporations took the world to the skies. Now these companies and more are supporting efforts well beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The Space Age began on Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union. An American satellite, Explorer 1, soon followed, with plans for sending humans into space in the near future.