The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a crewed mission to orbit the Moon on the 1st of April for the first time in more than 50 years, the BBC reports.
The Artemis II mission is scheduled to last ten days and take astronauts further into space than ever before. The four-person crew will not land on the Moon, but will orbit it in an attempt to find a landing site for future missions.
The Artemis II mission was scheduled to launch late last year but was delayed due to a number of technical issues. In February this year, the mission was aborted after pre-flight tests revealed a hydrogen fuel leak from the rocket’s connection to the launch pad. The mission did not launch in March after a helium leak was discovered.
Mission planners also have to consider weather conditions and the Moon’s position in its orbit around the Earth, and launch times are planned based on these factors. That means there’s about a week at the beginning of each month to get the rocket pointed in the right direction, and then about three weeks after that, the rocket can’t be launched.
The latest delay came just an hour before launch
when engineers had to fix a battery problem in the launch abort system. This is the ejector that NASA uses to evacuate astronauts and detonate the rocket if something goes wrong during launch.
Artemis II launched at 6:35 p.m. local time on the 1st of April. Before liftoff, the astronauts said they were going on the mission for their families, their teammates, and all of humanity.
The liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida was watched by a crowd of spectators who witnessed several milestones, including the separation of the boosters, which helped the main rocket reach speeds of more than 16,000 kilometers per hour. As Artemis II entered the upper atmosphere, spacecraft commander Reid Wiseman declared the view to be magnificent. The crew officially entered orbit when they crossed the Kármán Line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space at an altitude of 100 kilometers.
The Artemis II crew consists of four astronauts: Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Hansen represents the Canadian Space Agency and will be the first Canadian to approach the moon.
Once safely in orbit, the astronauts will conduct tests to determine how the Orion space capsule handles.
This will involve manually piloting the capsule into Earth’s orbit to test steering and positioning for a future Moon landing. The astronauts will then travel thousands of kilometers beyond the Moon to test Orion’s life support systems, propulsion, power and navigation systems. The crew will also conduct medical tests and send back data and images from space. The work will be done in weightlessness, and radiation levels will be higher than on the International Space Station, but still safe.
Upon returning to Earth, the astronauts will have to travel through Earth’s atmosphere and are expected to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the United States.
Although the Artemis II crew will not land on the Moon, the mission is important in preparing for the Artemis IV mission, which is scheduled for 2028, which will include a Moon landing. Before that, the Artemis III mission is planned for 2027 to test Orion’s rendezvous and docking with one or more platforms that will help it land on the Moon, as well as to test new spacesuits, if they are ready.
NASA has selected two competing companies for the Artemis missions – Space X and Blue Origin – to build a landing platform, and the final choice will be made closer to future missions.
Once Artemis IV will be in space, it will travel to the Moon’s south pole.
The Artemis V mission is also planned for 2028, which will aim to create the prerequisites for a longer human stay on the Moon. Further Artemis missions will focus on building a base on the Moon and regularly delivering astronauts to the Moon’s surface.
The last crewed mission, Apollo 17, went to the Moon in December 1972. A total of 24 astronauts have gone to the Moon, and 12 of them have set foot on its surface. The United States first went to the Moon in the 1960s, primarily to beat the Soviet Union in the space race, thereby strengthening its geopolitical and technological dominance. Once that goal was achieved, political enthusiasm and public interest waned, and with it, funding for Moon missions. The Artemis program was born out of a desire to return humans to the Moon, this time to establish a long-term presence.
Several other countries also have ambitions to land humans on the Moon in the 2030s. European astronauts are scheduled to join the Artemis missions later, and Japan has also secured a spot. China is building its own spacecraft with the goal of landing the first manned mission to the Moon’s south pole in 2030. Russia continues to talk about sending its astronauts to the Moon’s surface and building a base between 2030 and 2035. However, given international sanctions, this goal is more than optimistic.
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