When American astronaut Gene Cernan scratched his young daughter’s initials in the dust next to his footprints before going home, he had a pretty good idea that no one would ever come around to erase this little sentimental act.
It was December 1972, and US Navy captain Cernan was about to follow his two companions up the ladder of the Apollo 17 module and blast back to Earth from the moon.
Those footprints and those letters are no doubt still there—there’s no wind to blow them away—but Captain Cernan’s fear of being the last person to walk on the moon doesn’t seem to be coming true now.
In a week, if all goes according to plan, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will see the first lunar mission since Apollo 17 finally blasted into space — watched by a crowd of 100,000, many of whom weren’t even born when Captain Cernan wrote his initials. daughter in moon dust.
Fifty years in the making, the US space agency NASA plans to launch the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen for a mission as grandiose in its vision.
NASA plans to launch the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen for a mission to the moon
If all goes according to plan, in a week’s time the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will see the first lunar mission since Apollo 17 finally shoots into space
Because the astronauts who eventually travel with the Artemis program won’t get on the moon long enough to do a little lunar viewing and collect some souvenirs before returning, like they did during the Apollo missions.
They plan to stay, establish lunar bases at the moon’s south pole and build a space station orbiting the moon.
These two facilities are expected to allow NASA to test new technologies and operational procedures to develop future planetary missions, such as a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2040s and also travel to asteroids.
However, that will be a giant leap for humanity, and the somewhat smaller step right now is to get a new generation of astronauts safely to the moon and back.
NASA hasn’t launched a rocket designed for deep space in 50 years. The £19 billion Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule it carries will launch on August 29 for its maiden flight and first mission, Artemis 1.
NASA has 120 minutes to fire the rocket and send it into space.
If it misses that window, it will have to postpone the launch until early September.
At 98 m (322 feet) — 23 stories high above the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, where it arrived last week — the rocket is slightly shorter than the Apollo Saturn V that took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
However, the four RS-25 engines (the same ones used on the Space Shuttle), powered by both solid and liquid fuel, offer more thrust and a much higher top speed of up to 24,500 mph. (The Saturn rockets only used liquid fuel because the technology was not yet sufficiently advanced for anything else).
It needs that power to push a large spacecraft from low Earth orbit toward the moon, some 240,000 miles away.
A Chinese rover pictured in 2019 after landing on the moon. The nation hopes to one day establish a base on the lunar surface
The NASA Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft on board is currently on pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center
The rocket will carry dummy astronauts, including a woman, to reflect NASA’s desire to send a woman to walk on the moon in the near future
The capsule will fly around the moon in distant orbit for a few weeks before returning to splash in the Pacific Ocean six weeks after its initial launch.
“If you look at the rocket, it almost looks retro. Looks like we’re looking back at the Saturn V,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “But it’s a totally different, new, very advanced, more advanced rocket and spacecraft.”
While an Artemis 2 flight is planned to take astronauts around the moon in 2024, with a third mission lunar landing as early as 2025, no humans will travel on this inaugural Artemis 1 flight.
However, the vessel will not run out. A trio of human-sized test dummies will replace the crew in the Orion capsule, their bodies teeming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration.
In the commander’s seat, Commander Moonikin Campos will be strapped in – a tribute to electrical engineer Arturo Campos, who played a key role in bringing the troubled Apollo 13 mission back to safety in 1970.
Dressed in a new Orion Crew Survival System spacesuit, the mannequin will provide NASA scientists with important data about what humans experience during a trip to the moon.
The space agency will test a new Orion Crew Survival System spacesuit and collect key data on its effectiveness
In the commander’s seat, Commander Moonikin Campos will be strapped in – a tribute to electrical engineer Arturo Campos, who played a key role in bringing the troubled Apollo 13 mission back to safety in 1970.
The crew seats are mounted on an energy-damping system for a smoother journey – two sensors placed behind the commander’s seat and under the headrest register the acceleration and vibrations generated during the mission, and the mannequin itself is fitted with two sensors to measure radiation exposure.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo, and Nasa clearly chose a goddess for a reason. Of the 24 astronauts who have traveled to the moon so far — 12 of them walked on its surface — all have been men, and NASA is looking to increase the diversity of its space crews.
Two other mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will sit in the passenger seats of the Orion, and they reflect NASA’s determination that a manned flight to the moon will soon include a woman. The dummies have torsos made of materials that mimic a woman’s softer tissue, organs, and bones. They will be equipped with some 5,600 sensors and 34 radiation detectors to measure the amount of radiation exposure they encounter during the mission.
One is wearing a radiation protection vest and the other is not. Scientists say that different organs have different susceptibility to space radiation, and understanding that will be essential for long-term space exploration. Women generally have a higher risk of developing cancer because they have more radiation-sensitive organs, such as ovaries and breast tissue.
To round out the passenger list, there are two more surprising travelers. A cuddly version of Shaun the Sheep, Wallace and Gromit’s beloved friend in the Aardman animated series, goes to the moon to represent the European Space Agency’s involvement in the mission.
The Apollo 10 moon module used in 1969 was nicknamed Snoopy after the cartoon dog, and a cuddly version of him will also appear in Artemis 1. Hugs actually serve a useful function on space missions, floating around as a “zero-gravity indicator” to show when the spacecraft’s interior has reached microgravity weightlessness.
A small piece of moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, an embroidered Apollo 11 mission patch, and a bolt from one of Apollo 11’s F-1 engines will also be brought along for the ride.
Artemis 1 will also carry a variety of tree and plant seeds, as part of tests to study how they are affected by space radiation.
Growing plants in space is considered a critical factor in helping humans thrive on extended space missions, providing not only food but oxygen as well.
As has always been the case, money remains a critical issue in space travel. Years of delays in the SLS project, which was started more than a decade ago, have pushed costs up billions of dollars, although — rare for Washington — both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are continuing to fund the NASA program. have supported.
While the £19 billion spent developing and building the SLS system may seem expensive, taking inflation into account, it is less than half of what was spent on the Saturn rockets.
However, they were much cheaper to launch each time – each SLS launch is expected to cost around £3.3 billion.
Like Saturn, the SLS will not be reusable, putting it at a disadvantage against technology entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX company rockets.
Future lunar missions will not only be more gender diverse, but also international, as ten space agencies are involved with Artemis.
NASA has promised Japan a place on a future moon image, while the European Space Agency is also a major contributor to the project and may expect one too.
“We dream big,” former NASA administrator Charles Bolden said of the SLS program a few years ago.
In a few days we’ll see if those dreams can finally take off.