Artemis 1, NASA’s mission to the Moon that will usher in a new era of space exploration

NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, scheduled to lift off next week for the Moon, is about to change the history of human exploration of Earth’s natural satellite and its presence in deep space.

In this note we tell you all the details of the mission, such as the sophisticated engineering of the rocket and the ship, its scientific objectives and other news.

Artemis 1 is an unmanned mission to lunar orbit that is part of the ambitious Artemis program, successor to the Apollo missions, which came to an end in 1972.

It will be a round trip that will take approximately between 25 and 42 days.

If the mission is successful, in the next few years it will be followed by Artemis 2, which will make the same journey with humans, and Artemis 3, which will send astronauts to the surface of the natural satellite after more than 50 years, but this time to stay indefinitely. .

However, no space program mission would be possible without the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, which have taken almost a decade to build and will have their ultimate test with Artemis 1.

valued in $18 million the SLS rocket is the most powerful launch vehicle built to date. With this figure, it even exceeds the Saturn V, used in the Apollo program.

The first version of the mega rocket, called SLS Block 1 It will take off with a thrust force of 8.8 million pounds, enough energy to escape Earth’s gravity and propel the Orion spacecraft 322,000 kilometers from the planet.

It consists of four main parts: a main stage, four RS-25 engines (located at its base), two SRB thrusters on both flanks, and an Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), the only one that will keep the Orion spacecraft until it reaches lunar orbit.

Although now the objective of the Space Launch System is to reach the Moon, in the future it could also be used on missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

At the top of the SLS rocket is the Orion spacecraft, a capsule designed to transport astronauts. On the Artemis 1 mission, it will be the furthest human spacecraft ever flown in space.

It will also remain in lunar orbit for about six days to collect data and allow mission controllers to assess the spacecraft’s performance.

Orion will be in space longer than any astronaut ship without docking with a space station.

It will then return to the Earth’s atmosphere with a speed of 11 km/s and go through temperatures above 2700 °C, which will test its safety to bring humans home.

Although in Artemis 1 the Orion ship will not be occupied by humans, three mannequins will travel on board that will test the risk of exposure to space radiation.

The first of them, located in the main seat of the capsule, will be dressed in the suit Orion Crew Survival System equipped with radiation sensors.

There are two other “ghost torsos” called Helga and Zohar, part of a study called the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE). Both dummies will occupy the two lower seats of Orion and will also measure radiation in space.

Likewise, coupled to the ICPS, 10 CubeSATS will travel, nanosatellites the size of a shoe box, which will be expelled into space to carry out a series of experiments. These were:

CubeSats have been designed by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and other universities and institutes around the world.

Artemis 1 will lift off on Monday, August 29, from Launch Complex 39 B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located in Florida, United States.

The launch time could occur at any time between 12:33 and 2:33 pm, if no weather conditions prevent its development.

Source-larepublica.pe