EVENT: NASA's Artemis II mission coming soon. Humans are approaching the moon for the first time in more than half a century
NASA is launching the Artemis II mission tonight, which will send a human crew to the Moon for the first time since 1972. Although they will not set foot on the surface of the Moon, the four astronauts will reach the furthest from Earth of any space mission.
NASA planned to launch the SLS rocket on April 1 at 18:24 local time (22:24 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In Romania it will be 01:24 (April 2nd).
The crew consists of Reid Wiseman (Commander, 50), Christina Koch (Mission Specialist, 47), Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist, 50) and Victor J Glover, Pilot, 49.
For the first time, a woman, an astronaut from outside the US, and a black astronaut will participate in the mission to the moon.
Initially, NASA's plan was for the launch to be on February 6, but it was abandoned in February and March after technical problems arose.
What happens in the Artemis II mission
The four astronauts will not land on the moon during the ten-day mission, but will reach several thousand kilometers from the celestial body.
The Orion capsule is launched using the SLS rocket, one of the most powerful ever built. The four astronauts will do a “flyby” of the Moon, basically a detour, and the crew will be the furthest from Earth of any space mission, as they will be more than 6,000 kilometers from the far side of the Moon. They will be about 400,000 kilometers from Earth.
On day 5 of the Artemis II mission, the Orion capsule will enter the Moon's sphere of influence, and on day 7 it will exit on its way back to Earth. Orion will not enter the orbit of the Moon, because such a move would mean more maneuvers and much greater risks to the lives of the four people on board.
The climax will be on the return to Earth, when the heat shield will have to withstand temperatures of more than 2,500 degrees Celsius. Although problems have been detected with previous versions of this shield, those at NASA believe that the risk is not a significant one.
The stakes are high and the costs were commensurate. The development of the Artemis program, for the return to the moon, has cost almost 100 billion dollars in the last 15 years. A 2021 report shows that each launch of the SLS rocket with the Orion capsule costs $4.1 billion.
