The administrator of the POT, Bill Nelson, and other officials of the US space agency congratulated themselves on Wednesday for the successful launch of the Artemis I missionwhich will pave the way for a return of astronauts from USA “to Moon and beyond”.
“Today is a great day,” Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida, said at a news conference early this morning, four hours after the SLS rocket departed from the Kennedy Space Center Cape Canaveral (Florida) and when the Orion ship it had already separated from the first stage of the booster and was on its way to the Moon.
The most powerful and largest of all NASA rockets, taller than a 30-story building (322 feet or 98 meters), the SLS lifted off at 1:47 a.m. (6:47 GMT). from platform 39B of the Kennedy Center making his way through the dead of night.
Mission Artemis 1
It was the fifth launch attempt since last August. The four unsuccessful occasions were due to two due to technical problems and two to adverse weather conditions in the area of Cape Canaveral.
During takeoff preparation, the POT detected an “intermittent leak” of liquid hydrogen in the refueling valve in the central stage of the rocket and had to send a “red team” of specialists to the platform to adjust the connectors.
Mission manager Mike Sarafin told a post-launch press briefing that he is “not terribly concerned” about minor glitches in Orion’s star trackers and solar panel microswitches after liftoff.
The Orion spacecraft’s star trackers are working and data indicates all four solar arrays are deployed and locked, it added.
Sarafin noted that the Space Launch System moon rocket did its job and put the Orion spacecraft on a good trajectory to the Moon.
Orion spaceship
The NASA Deep Space Network is in charge of communications with the ship Orion Space while heading from Earth to the moon and today the first trajectory correction maneuvers will be carried out.
Orion will make its maiden flight near the moon on December 11 and will enter a distant retrograde orbit on December 21, culminating in a return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean that same day.
Some 15,000 people gathered in the Cape Canaveral area to watch the launch of the SLS rocket with the Orion ship at its tip from the Kennedy Center and nearby beaches and highways, according to local media.
NASA Artemis Program
The overall goal of NASA’s Artemis program is to return humans to the Moon for the first time in half a century and establish a base there as a step toward reaching Mars.
The last NASA mission in which its astronauts set foot on the Moon was Apollo 17, which took place between December 7 and 19, 1972.
The Orion spacecraft, which can fit up to four crew members, that is, one more than the Apollo, and with water and oxygen reserves that would allow it about 20 days of independent travel, will travel about 2.1 million kilometers on this trip.
The spacecraft, with three mannequins on board that collect data to help future crews, will fly close to the Moon, about 62 miles (almost 100 km) from its surface.
Then it will enter a distant lunar orbit in which it will come to be more than 61,000 kilometers from the earth’s satellite, that is, to where no other crew capsule has reached.
The Artemis I mission includes ten research CubeSats, each about the size of a shoebox, that will deploy and take various trajectories.
Among the CubeSats is the LunaH-Map, a small spacecraft that will produce a detailed map of portions of the lunar surface using neutron spectroscopy technology.
This mission will be followed, in 2024, by the first manned in the program, Artemis II, which will make the same journey, and it is expected that with Artemis III, foreseeably in 2025, the first woman and man of color to travel to the lunar land will touch the lunar soil. Moon.
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