NASA’s Artemis 1 mission will land on the Moon on August 29

The spacecraft is scheduled to travel to the Moon, deploy a few small satellites, and then put them into orbit. NASA’s goal is to practice spacecraft operation, test the conditions that crew will experience on and around the Moon, and assure everyone that the spacecraft and any occupants can return to Earth safely. .

The Conversation asked Jack Burns, a professor and space scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and a former member of the presidential transition team for NASA, to describe the mission, to explain what the Artemis program promises to do for space exploration. , and shows how the space program has changed in the half century since humans last set foot on the lunar surface.

How is Artemis 1 different from other rockets being launched regularly?

Artemis 1 is going to be the first flight of the new Space Launch System. It is a “heavy lift” vehicle, as NASA refers to it. It will be the most powerful rocket engine ever built, even more powerful than Apollo’s Saturn V system, which took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and ’70s.

It is a new type of rocket system, as it has a combination of both a liquid oxygen and hydrogen main engine and two strap-on solid rocket boosters derived from the Space Shuttle. It’s actually a hybrid between a spacecraft and Apollo’s Saturn V rocket.

Testing is very important, because the Orion crew capsule is about to get a real workout. It will be in the Moon’s space environment, a high-radiation environment, for a month. And, more importantly, it will test the heat shield, which protects the capsule and its occupants, when it hits 25,000 miles per hour back on Earth. This will be the fastest capsule reentry since Apollo, so it is very important that the heat shield works well.

The mission is also going to carry a series of small satellites, which will be placed in the Moon’s orbit. They’ll do some useful precursor science, everything from looking ahead into permanently shadowed craters where scientists think the radiation is water to making more measurements of the environment, looking at what effects long-term exposure will have on humans.

What is the goal of the Artemis project? What’s coming in the series of launches?

This mission is the first step towards Artemis 3, which will result in the first manned mission to the Moon in the 21st century and the first since 1972. Artemis 1 is an unmanned test flight.

Artemis 2, which is due to launch a few years after that, will have astronauts on board. It will also be an orbital mission, much like Apollo 8, which orbited the Moon and came back home. Astronauts will spend more time orbiting the Moon and testing everything out with a human crew.

And, eventually, it will lead to a trip to the surface of the Moon in which Artemis 3 – sometime mid-decade – will rendezvous with the SpaceX starship and transfer crew. Orion will remain in orbit, and the Lunar Starship will carry astronauts to the surface. They will travel to the Moon’s south pole to see an area that scientists have not previously explored to probe for water ice.

Artemis reminds of Apollo. What has changed in the last half century?

The reason Kennedy initially envisioned for Apollo was to defeat the Soviet Union on the Moon. The administration didn’t particularly care about space travel, or the Moon itself, but it represented an audacious goal that would clearly put America first in terms of space and technology.

The downside of doing this is the old saying “You live by the sword, you die by the sword.” When America reached the moon, it was basically game over. We defeated the Russians. So we put down some flags and did some science experiments. But soon after Apollo 11, within a few more missions, Richard Nixon canceled the program because political objectives were served.

So fast forward 50 years. It’s a very different atmosphere. We are not doing this to defeat the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else, but to launch a sustainable search beyond Earth orbit.

The Artemis program is inspired by several different goals. This includes in situ resource utilization, which means using resources such as water ice and lunar soil to produce food, fuel and building materials.

The program is also helping entrepreneurs start the lunar and space economy, as SpaceX does much of this first mission to the surface of the Moon. NASA doesn’t have a starship, but it is buying seats to allow astronauts to surface. SpaceX will then use the Starship for other purposes – to carry other payloads, private astronauts and astronauts from other countries.

Fifty years of technology development means that going to the Moon is now much less expensive and technically more feasible, and much more sophisticated experiments are possible when you explore computer technology. Those 50 years of technological advancement have been an utter game-changer. Almost anyone with the financial resources can now send a spacecraft to the Moon, though not necessarily with humans.

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services has contracted private companies to build landers without going to the Moon. My colleagues and I have a radio telescope going to the Moon in January on a lander. This would not have been possible even 10 years ago.

What other changes are there in Artemis’ stores?

The administration has said that on that first crewed flight, Artemis 3, there will be at least one woman and most likely a person of color. They can be the same. There can be many.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of that diversity, because today’s little kids who look up to NASA can say, “Hey, there’s an astronaut who looks like me. I can do it. I can.” I can be part of the space program.”

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