Artemis II launches Nasa astronauts to the moon for first time in 53 years
And we have liftoff. Humanity is about to be reunited with the moon for the first time in 53 years as Artemis II finally took flight yesterday.
Crowds cheered as a spacecraft named Integrity and a minivan-sized capsule soared into the clear skies above Florida at 6.35pm local time.
The mission will bring Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen from Launch Pad 39 at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center to another celestial body.
‘Full-send,’ said Wiseman, clearing the way for the launch.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson replied: ‘You take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of this generation.
‘Good luck. Godspeed, Artemis II. Let’s go.’
This is the first time anyone will travel this far from Earth since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The goal of the 620,000-mile-long round-trip is to test life-support and other systems – the toilet included – inside the Orion.
If all goes to plan, the next mission in the 21st-century equivalent of the Apollo programme could send humans to the lunar south pole by 2028.
Artemis II just launched – what now?
Artemis II was slated for earlier this year but was delayed due to hiccups during dress rehearsals.
Yet these were a good thing, Libby Jackson, who worked in Mission Control for a module on the International Space Station, tells Metro.
‘Until you have got all the way down to zero, it might not happen,’ she says of the 10-second countdown to launch.
‘You don’t believe it until you get into those final seconds.’
The head of space at the Science Museum in London adds that, as nail-biting as the countdown was, it’s just the start of the 10-day mission.
‘It’s 10 minutes up into space. That all has to go to plan, right? You want the crew to be safe. You want the rocket to work well.’
One of the things that has gone right so far is the unfolding of Orion’s solar arrays. Jackson says: ‘If you don’t deploy the solar panels, you have no mission, because you need the power.’
Don’t get too attached to the 2,600,000kg orange rocket, though. The core stage, crammed with engines, is already somewhere in the Atlantic.
At nearly 1,381 miles above the surface, the upper stage of the rocket fired to shove the Orion into an elliptical orbit around Earth so it won’t fall back.
This will set the record for the farthest that people have travelled from Earth while still swinging around the planet.
But that record will only last about 13 hours, when the second stage will fire once again on the rocket’s second lap around the planet tomorrow.
This will push the crew into what Nasa calls ‘high-Earth orbit’, or about 43,730 miles above your head, before the second stage is discarded.
From then on, it’ll just be four people floating inside the Orion.
On April 6, the spacecraft will swoop around the moon’s far side, also called the dark side, so astronauts can observe parts of the lunar surface never seen by humans before.
Just a day later, the team will return to Earth by using the moon’s gravity to fling itself, a process called ‘free return’, which will take four days.
The Orion will smash into the Earth’s rough atmosphere at about 25,000mph, withstanding temperatures of 2,760°C, and splash down just off the coast of San Diego on April 10.
‘If everyone has done their homework, they will go into space, go to the moon and just come back,’ Jackson says.
‘But everything has been well prepared and well checked out and well tested. No one launches a mission expecting it to fail.’
Why are we bothering to go to the moon?
Compared to discussions about migrating to Mars or discovering life on faraway worlds, visiting our closest neighbour might sound mundane.
But there’s a great deal we don’t know about this big grey rock – including how it even formed, which could help us understand how we came to be.
Dr Megan Argo, a reader in astrophysics at the University of Lancashire, tells Metro: ‘The moon has fascinated humans for thousands of years, appearing constant yet ever-changing in our skies and helping track time and seasons.
‘Every culture has developed its own stories and traditions around it.’
Unlike the Earth, where ocean currents and earthquakes can sweep away our history, the moon is a history book.
‘This means its rocks and potential water deposits act as an archive, offering insights into planetary formation that we simply can’t access on Earth,’ Dr Argo says.
By getting up close to the moon, space officials can think of ways to get people even further into the cosmos.
Not only for months-long stays on the moon in bases powered by nuclear energy, but also for journeying to Mars.
‘One of the points of the Artemis programme is to learn how to live and work on another planet through your body,’ Jackson says.
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