The names of four astronauts who will travel around the Moon at the end of 2024 in the Artemis II mission They will be announced this Monday, in the prelude to an ambitious project for humans to set foot on this satellite again after half a century.
The American NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will make the announcement at 10 (local time 15 GMT) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in the southern United States.
In November 2024the astronauts – three Americans and one Canadian – have planned fly for about 10 days around the Moon in the Orion spacecraftwhich was already successfully tested without a crew at the end of 2022, during the Artemis I mission.
“We already tested the rocket and the spacecraft. That was a 26 day mission last November and it passed all the tests. It was so good that we added additional tests during the course of the flight. And now we are going to put a human crew (…) It will be the first time we return to the moon in half a century”NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said last week during the Axios Innovators Forum.
Artemis II will be the “test of human support systems”he added.
American space program Artemis seeks to step on the Moon again at the end of 2025for the first time since the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.
“Artemis is the first step in the next era of human exploration.. Together with commercial and international partners, NASA will establish a sustainable presence on the Moon to prepare for missions to Mars.
In his presentation at Axios, Nelson said that expected to see humans on Mars by 2040.
Only 12 personsall white men, have stepped on the lunar surface.
NASA plans to send a woman and a non-white person to the Moon for the first time in the Artemis missions. Artemis III, where there will be a descent to the lunar surface, is expected to take place about 12 months after Artemis II.
In mid-March, NASA together with the private company Axiom Space presented a prototype of the new generation of space suits that astronauts will use for Artemis III.
Although Axiom Space describes the spacesuit as “revolutionary,” more flexible and with greater thermal protection than those of the Apollo mission, it maintains the use of diapers.
(With information from AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com