NASA launched its first crewed lunar flight in more than 50 years on Wednesday, as the Artemis II mission began with liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission comes at the dawning of a new age of competition in space.
What is Artemis II?
Artemis II is the second mission in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the surface of the Moon in 2028, and establish a permanent base on the lunar surface in the 2030s. Artemis II is the first crewed mission in the program, and takes place four years after Artemis I – an uncrewed mission which tested the Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule.
Who is flying Artemis II?
Artemis II will see American astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, orbit the Earth, circle the moon, and then return to Earth at a record re-entry speed of 40,000 km/h (25,000 miles). At one point in the mission, the crew will be further from Earth than humans have ever been, surpassing the record of 400,171 km (248,655 miles) set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
Was the Artemis II launch successful?
A NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket roared into motion at 6:35pm on Wednesday, accelerating the Orion craft to around 27,360 km/h (17,000 mph) within eight minutes of flight. A technical error with the rocket’s Flight Termination System (FTS) threatened to delay the launch, but NASA technicians were able to resolve the problem with an hour to spare.
The FTS system allows flight engineers to trigger the rocket’s self-destruction in the event that it veers off course and threatens lives on the ground.
When will Artemis II reach the Moon?
The spacecraft will spend 24 hours in high-Earth orbit – around 74,000km (46,000 miles) above the planet’s surface – conducting systems tests before Orion’s own engines will fire on Thursday evening, setting the craft on a trajectory for the Moon.
Orion will enter the Moon’s gravitational sphere on Monday, and will begin its lunar flyby later that day. During this phase of the mission, the Artemis II crew will become the first humans to lay eyes on the far side of the Moon, which always faces away from Earth. The Moon’s gravity will then sling Orion directly back toward Earth, and after reentry, the crew capsule will separate from the spacecraft for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, April 10.
Why is NASA returning to the Moon now?
Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17, in which astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walked on the surface of the Moon. The Apollo missions took place at the height of the Cold War, with the US spending 4% of its federal budget on NASA during the 1960s in a bid to land on the Moon before the USSR. After the first successful lunar landing in 1969, however, the agency’s budget contracted amid waning public interest and economic turmoil.
What disasters have befallen NASA’s space program?
Following the 1969 Moon landing, a series of tragedies further curtailed the US space program. NASA’s space shuttle Challenger disintegrated less than two minutes into its tenth flight in January 1986, killing all seven crew members on board. The disaster was broadcast live on CNN: images of the craft exploding in a mid-air fireball and silence from mission control witnessed by millions of Americans.
An inquest found that faulty rubber O-rings caused Challenger’s rocket booster to leak hot gases, which ignited the booster’s remaining propellant.
Tragedy struck again in 2003 when another space shuttle, the Columbia, disintegrated during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board. Columbia’s fate was decided during launch, when a piece of insulating foam broke loose and punctured heat-shielding tiles on the craft’s wing. This damage caused the wing to break apart during re-entry.
Who restarted the US lunar mission program?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: rt.com
