In November 2022, NASA launched the most powerful rocket ever built – Artemis – named for the sister of the Greek god, Apollo.
The Artemis rocket stood at 332 feet high – just a little taller than the Statue of Liberty! This rocket had two rocket boosters loaded with over 2 million pounds of solid rocket fuel – which was all used up two minutes into the flight! This extra propellant was needed because this rocket weighed 5.5 million pounds.
The rocket didn’t carry any humans in its capsule, called Orion, but it did carry mannequins specially designed to measure radiation exposure and the forces placed on a human during the trip, as well as a stuffed “Snoopy”, to serve as a ‘zero gravity indicator’!
Stay tuned for more Artemis launches! The second Artemis launch will hopefully come in 2024, and will carry four astronauts around the moon, and then, in 2025, we might see the first manned landing on the moon since 50 years ago!
Kids can learn more about the Artemis rocket at these events in January 2023.
- January 18 @ 3:30pm: Space Science for Kids: Rockets! – Shadle Park Library
- January 19 @ 3:30pm: Space Science for Kids: Rockets! – Liberty Park Library
- January 24 @ 3:30pm: Space Science for Kids: Rockets! – Hillyard Library
If you’d like to read about rockets, Spokane Public Library’s Hoopla database has two very new children’s eBooks on rockets, and our streaming service, Kanopy, has an excellent PBS Nova documentary.
- Rockets by Rebecca Pettiford | hoopla
- Space Rockets by Maria Koran | hoopla
- Rise of the Rockets | Kanopy
