NASA is preparing to send astronauts on a historic mission around the moon in 2024. The Artemis II mission will be the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket. The crew includes three NASA astronauts and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut.
Reid Wiseman will serve as the mission commander. Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be mission specialists. Koch will be the first woman to fly around the moon.
Glover will be the first Black person to do so. Hansen will be the first Canadian. The astronauts have been training extensively for the mission.
Astronauts’ Icelandic geology training
They have practiced exiting the Orion capsule into the ocean after splashdown. They have studied geology in Iceland to prepare for observing the lunar surface.
Much of their training takes place in a high-tech simulator at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The simulator has digital displays that show Earth, the moon, and stars outside the windows. The astronauts use the simulator controls to practice operating the spacecraft.
Despite the intense preparation, there are risks involved in the mission. “There isn’t this kind of backup system because they’re going to be very far away,” said Moribah Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at UT Austin. “They’re going to have to figure it out or not.”
The goal of the Artemis program is to return humans to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “The goal is to go to the moon to learn so we can go farther to Mars and beyond.”
Artemis II will be a critical test of the Orion spacecraft and its systems. If successful, it will pave the way for Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2026.
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