NASA’s Artemis 1 space mission- will humans be able to live on the moon?
NASA’s Artemis 1 will flyby the moon and set the pace for future returns there for humansOn the 16th of November, Artemis 1 set out to the moon from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage Separates from Orion
The mission that took place last Wednesday, is set to see an exciting progression today at 12:44 GMT, where it is predicted that the Orion capsule attached to the spacecraft will sweep 130km (80 miles) across the lunar surface before reaching a lunar orbit.
Watch it live here!
In this time, which will take 34 minutes it will be out of contact. However, we know it will be zooming over the landing sites of Apollo 11, 12, and 14. It will also start sending footage and data back from the flyby.
NASA’s Jim Geffre says that "It's been a really exciting few days for both the team and the spacecraft as we learn how the system operates in the deep space environment,"
credit: NASA
For this space journey, humans were not taken on board just three test dummies. These manikins are covered in thousands of sensors that will measure the stresses of a human travelling on this mission.
"Those sensors are getting an idea of whether the environment is going to be OK for people," explained Nasa astronaut Zena Cardman.
"So there are things like radiation sensors, motion sensors, accelerometers - things that we as human payloads are going to care a lot about."
Humans could be working and living on the moon for "durations" before 2030, according to Howard Hu, the director of the US agency's Orion lunar spacecraft programme.
“Certainly, in this decade, we are going to have people living for durations, depending on how long we will be on the surface. They will have habitats, they will have rovers on the ground”
credit: NASA
The spacecraft will fly within 60 miles of the Moon, then a further 40,000 miles before coming back around for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on the 11th of December. in total, the spacecraft will travel 1.3 million miles on the 25-day mission, which is the furthest a spacecraft built for human beings have ever flown.
If the mission is successful there will be follow-up missions- Artemis 2 and 3 with them having humans onboard.
Artemis 3 might not launch till 2026 but it will be our first return to the moon since Apollo 17 in December of 1972.
Under NASA's plans, the first woman will land on the moon and on a subsequent visit the first person of colour will also visit.