It dawns in Florida with humid and cool weather. It is silhouetted against a sunny, spring sky. If all goes well, this Wednesday four astronauts will take an elevator up the equivalent of more than 30 stories high and get into the hatch of the Orion capsule in which they will, without landing. It will be the first time since 1972 that our satellite receives a human visit, and this time it is historic.
Among the crew of the Artemis 2 are the first woman, and the first black man, the pilot, who have traveled to our neighboring corps. In addition to Commander Reid Wiseman, Canadian Jeremy Hansen will also be on board, the first non-American to travel to the Moon.
“It looks like this is serious,” mission specialist Koch said during a virtual press conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The crew of the Artemis 2 have been in quarantine since Friday, as the space agency cannot risk that a last-minute contagion could delay a mission that costs billions of dollars and has been preparing for years. Kock’s surprise upon seeing the enormous shuttle again, known as the Space Launch System, is very similar to what the astronauts of the Apollo program, all men, military and white, experienced more than half a century ago when they saw before them the Saturn V rocket prepared to take them to the Moon.
The crew of the Artemis 2 recognized that it is a historic moment because a woman and a black man go to the satellite for the first time, but they wanted to divert attention. “Black boys and girls can look at me and think, ‘Look, this guy looks just like me and look what he’s doing,’” Glover explained. “I love that. But I hope that one day we won’t have to highlight these types of events because it will be something historic for all of humanity; neither black history, nor women’s history, but for everyone,” she highlighted.
The nights are being clear and the Moon can be seen very bright in the sky over the Kennedy Center, near Cape Canaveral. Before reaching the place, you cross a huge bridge over the water, and to the left you can perfectly see the launch platforms, including 39B, from where the Artemis 2 will launch; an environment that on Wednesday, if all goes according to plan, will be full of spectators eager to watch the takeoff.
A journalist asked the astronauts what it feels like to look up and see the satellite not as something beautiful and distant that can only be admired from afar, but as the place you are going to travel to tomorrow. Koch, a 47-year-old scientist, said she hopes that “this mission will be the beginning of a new era in which anyone on Earth can look at the Moon and see it as an affordable destination.”
What surprises the visitor most are the enormous hangars being built for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, and a new SpaceX launch pad, Elon Musk’s, to launch the Starship megarocket. Musk’s gigantic devices, which until now take off from Texas, would have their own place to go into space from the legendary Kennedy Center. From where the takeoff of Artemis 2 will be followed, it will also be possible to attend the launch of future Starships whose mission is to land on the Moon.
The Artemis 2 mission must test critical systems of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, such as oxygen supply, air purification, air conditioning, drinking water and the operation of the engines that must take these four people to the Moon and back to our planet, passing through the hidden side of the satellite. The four crew members will be the first humans to see areas that have never before been seen by human eyes. Each of them will take images and videos during the hours in which the spacecraft will fly over the lunar surface at a distance of about 7,000 kilometers. The satellite will then be about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. Communication with Earth will be interrupted for about 40 minutes until the ship emerges again on the other side of the satellite.
NASA has determined that this will be the first manned trip in a program with which it wants to colonize the Moon, establishing from the beginning of the next decade, when the so-called lunar economy would already be a reality. Before that, the agency hopes to be able to take astronauts to the surface of the satellite in 2028. If plans do not change, that first moon landing would also be carried out by a woman and a non-white person, although the Trump government, which shaped the Artemis program in its first term as president, .
On Sunday, the technical managers of the mission confirmed that everything is ready for takeoff: rocket, ship, shuttle, crew. “We just need good weather,” said Shawn Quinn, head of ground systems during the launch. According to the latest forecasts, there is an 80% chance that the weather will be good this Wednesday, so the mission could be launched on the first possible day. If it is finally delayed, NASA has a possibility of takeoff every day until next April 6, always after midnight, Spanish peninsular time.
The countdown begins this Monday, two days before the crucial moment in which the word sounds ignition (ignition) and the SLS engines start. Before that, a studied choreography of preparations will have to be followed, especially the loading of fuel, oxygen and liquid hydrogen at more than 250 degrees below zero. Last February that process ran into problems, forcing the mission to be delayed until April.
