NASA is about to leave: Artemis II is now being filled with fuel
It’s going to happen at half past one tonight. NASA is now filling Artemis II with fuel and then taking humanity further than we have ever gone: in a kind of orbit around the moon.
Artemis II
No one will set foot on the moon, but four astronauts will travel 400,000 kilometers in the Orion capsule and hopefully return in one piece. These are the Americans Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman and the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. It is exciting, because there were a number of leaks earlier that made it impossible to leave safely. Now they all seem to have been closed and Artemis II can be launched at half past twelve Dutch time. The astronauts have been in quarantine for weeks to ensure that they do not become ill just before departure. It is special what they are going to do: after 54 years we are sending people to the moon again, although it remains a bit strange that they will not set foot on the moon and that that will not happen until 2028, maybe even 2029.
Heat shields
The journey is not without risks: we have to wait and see whether the heat shields really work properly, there is a lot of cosmic radiation and the return to the atmosphere in particular will be a difficult moment, because they go very fast. NASA says: “After the launch into space on top of the SLS, the crew will travel around the moon and back in their Orion spaceship during a mission of about ten days. Artemis II will be the first crewed test flight of the SLS and Orion, where testing the technologies needed for long-term lunar exploration and crewed missions to Mars.” So there is definitely something bigger going on than just a ‘circle around the moon’. You can watch the astronauts leave tonight on NASA’s livestream.
