Artemis 1, the first unmanned mission of the American return-to-the-moon program, should take off from August 29, announced this Wednesday (20) the United States space agency (NASA).
Thus, the spacecraft will make the first of a series of flights with which the United States intends to return to the Moon with a human crew, establish a sustained presence there and use the experiences obtained to plan a trip to Mars sometime in the 1990s. 2030
NASA official Jim Free said the first window of possible launch dates for the massive Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion docked capsule consists of August 29, September 2 and September 5.
The latest tests carried out in June reached 90% of the targets and, on Wednesday, Cliff Lanham, responsible for the space vehicles division, said that engineers had fixed faults that caused the loss of hydrogen in the launch system.
Artemis 1 will travel around the far side of the Moon in a mission that will last four to six weeks, longer than any manned spacecraft has ever done without docking. Afterwards, it will return to Earth faster and will be subjected to more heat than all previous ships. It will also position small satellites, called CubeSats, intended to develop space experiments.
“Our first and foremost objective is to expose Orion’s heat shield to lunar recovery conditions,” said Mike Sarafin, mission chief. On its return, the capsule will travel at about 39,400 km/h and will experience temperatures about half the heat of the Sun.
The second objective is to verify the solvency of the rocket and capsule flight during the mission. Finally, NASA will try to recover Orion after it lands, and then review it in depth.
The next flight will be Artemis 2, which will be manned, but the astronauts will not leave the spacecraft. In turn, Artemis 3 will later bring the first woman and the first black person to the lunar soil.
