A few days before the mission to the Moon takes off, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen arrived this Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA). The crew members, who enter the strictest phase of their quarantine this Friday – which began on the 18th at the mission control center in Houston – held a live press conference with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman and other executives of the space agency. “If we want to move forward, if we want to go far, we have to go together,” stressed the mission leader, Commander Reid Wiseman from Cape Canaveral, when talking about the cooperation between countries that has made the Artemis program possible.
The mission will take the crew on a trip of about 10 days around the Moon. It will be the first time that NASA tests the life support systems of the Orion spacecraft with humans on board. The first manned flight to the Moon in half a century also marks the beginning of the plan to establish .
Along with Wiseman, the pilot Victor Glover, the mission specialist Christina Koch and the specialist from the Canadian Space Agency will travel, who will reach the satellite, will be trapped by its gravity, will go around its hidden side and return to our planet. The last time a human crew did something like this was in 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. “We are in an era in which we have to go hand in hand to respond to humanity’s challenges,” said Koch, the first woman to participate in a lunar mission. “It is an honor for me to be an example for girls and boys,” said the mission specialist.
Preparations are being finalized at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The , the most powerful in the world, is already placed on take-off platform 39B, the same place from which some of the Apollo program missions went into space more than half a century ago. The astronauts are expected to give a final press conference this Sunday, this time virtual, to minimize any risk or health complications before takeoff day arrives.
