The waning crescent 25.3 day old moon
18.7 percent lit
The USA has ordered 18 engines for moon missions. No one talks about any of this. Four engines are used for liftoff.
The RS-25 is half of the powerful, (click here) proven SLS propulsion systems designed to launch humans and large exploration payloads to the Moon and ultimately to Mars and beyond. Four RS-25 engines, along with two 5-segment solid rocket boosters, will give SLS approximately 8.8 million pounds of thrust during launch – more lift than any current launch vehicle and 15 percent more than the Saturn V rockets that launched astronauts on journeys to the moon.
With unmatched payload mass and volume capability, the advanced, super heavy-lift SLS is the only rocket that can send the Orion spacecraft, astronauts, and a large cargo to the Moon on a single mission. This reduces the number and complexity of in-space operations and increases the chances of mission success....The first Artemis rocket stage (click here) is guided toward NASA’s Pegasus barge Jan. 8 ahead of its forthcoming journey to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Teams rolled out, or moved, the completed core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the barge in preparation for the core stage Green Run test series. Pegasus, which was modified to ferry SLS rocket hardware, will transport the core stage more than 40 miles from Michoud to Stennis for the comprehensive core stage Green Run test series. Green Run, named for its testing of new, or green, hardware progressively, is the final test campaign ahead of the first Artemis launch.
