NASA just presented its new megarocket to the world.
To acknowledge the completion of the world's most powerful rocket — and the first time the space agency hauled the 322-foot-tall behemoth to its Kennedy Space Center launchpad — NASA collaborated with Pearl Jam rocker Eddie Vedder to make a music video about the looming 2022 launch.
It's a soaring rock tune set to an animated montage of the rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), blasting into space and orbiting the moon.
"The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft – the only human-rated spacecraft in the world capable of deep-space travel – are planned to lift off from Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon," NASA wrote. "Through the Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence, and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars."
If all goes as planned, the space agency will practice fueling the rocket and counting down for launch on April 3. Then, as early as May 2022, the rocket's first uncrewed mission around the moon (called Artemis-1) will launch into space from the Kennedy Space Center.
Eventually, the Orion spacecraft, which sits atop the SLS rocket, may carry astronauts to the distant red planet, Mars.
