Not long until one of the most anticipated space missions of the year. THE NASA intends to launch its huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket towards the Moon on February 6th. The date marks the start of opening of the Artemis II launch windowwhich is expected to send four astronauts around the satellite.
Final preparations on the rocket are being carried out at the Kennedy Space Center in the United States.
On January 17th, traveling at just a mile per hour on its mobile launch pad, the SLS, 98 meters high, coupled to the Orion capsule, emerged at sunrise from the giant garage doors of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building for a slow drive to its launch pad about 4 miles away, as hundreds of agency employees and contractors watched intently.
The mission crew includes three American astronauts and one Canadian astronaut: Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman.
It will be man’s return to lunar orbit since Apollo 17, in 1972, the last manned mission with the same destination.
“One of the reasons these missions are so important is the discovery and knowledge we bring back to Earth, and that’s the main goal. We have both lunar geological science and human research on this mission,” Koch said.
Confirmation of February 6 depends on a crucial dress rehearsal four days before, which simulates the countdown to launch, in order to identify any problems or setbacks before the flight.
If setbacks occur, the initial launch window will remain open until February 11th. If NASA is unable to launch within this period, a new attempt will be made in the first week of March.
The rocket’s Artemis II mission is the second under NASA’s billion-dollar Artemis lunar program, following an unmanned flight in 2022, and the first to carry astronauts, who will orbit the Moon on a 10-day journey, taking them to the furthest point ever reached by humans in space.
But why won’t Artemis II land on the lunar surface?
“The short answer is because it doesn’t have the capability to do so. It’s not a lunar landing module,” said Patty Casas Horn, NASA’s deputy leader of Mission Analysis and Integrated Assessments.
“Throughout NASA’s history, everything we do has involved a certain amount of risk, and so we want to make sure that risk makes sense and accept only the risk that is necessary, within reasonable limits. So we develop a capability, we test it, we develop another capability, and we test it again. And we will get to land on the Moon, but the Artemis II program is really about the crew.”
