The Artemis mega moon rocket is NASA's latest and most powerful launch vehicle, intended to return astronauts, robots, and supplies to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. It consists of a multistage rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS), which can carry various additional modules atop it, such as the Orion crew vehicle that houses astronauts during flight.
Artemis 1: On Nov. 16, 2022, the SLS achieved liftoff for the first time, blasting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. ET. After months of delay and three aborted attempts at launch, the rocket finally took off. Shortly after, the Orion crew capsule detached for an unmanned, 26-day mission to the moon and back. The capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere and successfully splashed down off the coast of Baja California, Mexico on Dec. 11, 2022. With that, phase one of NASA's Artemis mission — which will eventually return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years — officially concluded.
