Meet SLS, the rocket taking Nasa’s crew into spacepublished at 21:30 BST
The Visual Journalism Team
BBC News
The launch window is now just two hours away. Lets take a look at the rocket that will be taking the Artemis II crew into space:
The Artemis II astronauts will begin the mission on Nasa’s rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). It is the most powerful rocket the US space agency has ever built.
Standing 98m tall (322 ft), the SLS has four engines to provide the power to get off the ground. The core stage is essentially a giant fuel tank, containing more than three million litres of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Its job is to carry the Orion spacecraft – which houses the tiny crew module where the astronauts will spend the next 10 days – into space.
SLS has flown only once before, launching in 2022 with no astronauts onboard for the Artemis I mission.
The launch is one of the most dangerous parts of the mission – everything has to go perfectly. But if anything does go wrong during the early stages of the launch, the Launch Abort System, at the very top of the rocket, should propel the astronauts to safety.
