In just over a week, August 29 NASA It plans to launch the SLS (Space Launch System) supercarrier on a first mission. A few days ago, the agency prepared a rocket at Station 39B at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral and is now waiting for the next launch window. The SLS will be NASA’s largest rocket launched into space since the Saturn V rocket that took American astronauts to the moon.
And no less significant is the important start of the SLS, which is scheduled for August 29 – Artemis 1. It will be a public test and a symbolic opening the new A spaceflight program designed to allow Americans to return humans to the Moon. And in the long run also on the planet of the solar system – Mars, which is alien to us. So it’s worth learning a little more about that.
Artemis will allow humanity to return to the moon
When the Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s developed the Apollo program, the question of subsequent missions to the Silver Globe as part of the following endeavors seemed a natural step forward. The crazy pace of space conquest, imposed by competition with the Soviet Union, made some scientists think about building lunar bases and colonizing our natural satellite.
However, the waning interest of Congress and US taxpayers in the moon forced NASA to postpone further dreams of conquering the moon and canceling the Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions. Thus, in December 1972, the entire Apollo program was shut down. At the time, he might not have been aware that no human foot would ever set foot on the moon for more than half a century.
Meanwhile, repeated attempts have been made to fly away from Earth’s orbit, for example as part of the Constellation program begun in 2004 by President of the United States George shrub. It was then planned that the first manned flights to the Moon would take place in the mid-2000s. Six years later, Barack Obama boycotted Constellation.
Return to the Silver Globe is a guarantee for Americans only Modern Artemis (the name is not accidental here – Artemis in Greek mythology was the twin sister of Apollo). NASA plans that the first moon landing under this program will take place in 2025. In subsequent years, the most important goal of Artemis will be to enable humans to be permanently present on the Silver Globe and to land on Mars – the second object in the solar system (other than Earth) visited by astronauts NASA.
In a week, the Artemis 1 mission begins – the photo shows the SLS rocket Teri Rina / AP Photo
Artemis 1, or general test
Before the first landing on the moon takes place, the Americans are planning two less exciting missions, the first (Artemis 1) that will begin on August 29. it will always be airline The drone, which can be called a public test before the Artemis 2 mission (which, however, is in a moment).
The mission plan is to send the Orion spacecraft (or rather, the Orion multipurpose vehicle) to the moon – a capsule adapted for long-range missions outside Earth orbit. Orion’s second-ever spaceflight will be here. The first happened in December 2014, when Orion (launched by a Delta 4 heavy rocket) was hit in high Earth orbit. Now, Orion will be launched into space by an SLS Block I rocket, the “weakest” of the prepared SLS versions.
In the first stage of the mission, Orion will be transported into space, and after orbiting the Earth, it will head towards the Moon (its distance from our planet is about 384,000 km). It will reach its circumference after at least 8 days (solar panels will be deployed along the way and 10 small CubeSat satellites will be launched to study the moon). Orion will then fire up its engines and enter orbit around the Silver Globe.
It will take 6 to 19 days to ship. Then it will be pulled out of the moon’s orbit, will use the gravitational assist of our normal moon, and will make its way back to Earth. Orion is scheduled to land on our planet (in the Pacific Ocean, near the American coast) for 26-42 days from the start.
Source: NASA
The main objective of the mission, of course, is to verify the performance of the SLS rocket and Orion ship in deep space flight conditions. Of course, the astronauts will not fly aboard the capsule, but there are dolls that will allow NASA to collect all the data needed to launch the Artemis 2 mission.
Artemis 2 and 3, the first long journeys of man in decades
The second Artemis mission is scheduled for May 2024 and will be somewhat reminiscent of the Apollo 8 mission (from 1968). NASA astronauts (there will be four) will actually board Orion, and they will fly into lunar orbit. They will collect all the necessary data for the agency and verify the conditions that Orion provides during its long stay in space.
The Artemis 2 mission will not end with a moon landing, but it will be a public test before the Artemis 3 mission, that is, the Americans’ return to the Silver Globe that has been announced for years. This is still in its infancy, but NASA is planning it for 2025 (although the mission, of course, may still be delayed several times). As part of that, the first astronaut and another cosmonaut will land on our natural satellite, and two more people will remain in lunar orbit, waiting for the probe to return.
Source: NASA
Astronauts will spend a maximum of a week on the moon. During this time, they will be doing several space walks, conducting a series of Silver Globe surveys and trying to recover water from lunar ice (a landing around the South Pole is planned). The four will return to Earth after spending a maximum of a month in space.
The Artemis 1 mission, which is scheduled to begin flights under the Artemis program, is scheduled to launch at 8:33 a.m. local time (2:33 p.m. CST). NASA has a two-hour launch window where it can launch an SLS rocket with Orion on top. If this fails, the following windows will appear on September 2-6.
We will write more about the beginning of the Artemis 1 mission on Gazeta.pl
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