With the onset of thunderstorms, the Artemis II astronauts leave Earth. Here’s what follows

For the first time in more than 50 years, scientists are heading to the moon. The Artemis II crew launched Wednesday aboard NASA’s SLS rocket, which left thick vapor trails across Florida’s clear blue sky. The four scientists and their team on the ground are now he is busy preparing for the challenges that lie ahead.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard the Orion capsule attached to the SLS rocket. The historic mission – the first time in more than half a century that humans have visited the moon – will take them on a journey of 230,000 kilometers around the lunar surface and back and will serve as a test flight for the Orion spacecraft.

The nearly 10-day mission will not only test the spacecraft’s life support systems and capabilities, but will also advance critical technologies ahead of future deep space missions to the moon.

The way to go

The project is on a flight path that keeps the spaceship in the Earth’s gravitational influence over the moon, then returns to the planet for blast-off. This route, called a free return trajectory, uses less fuel and is less dangerous than entering the lunar orbit.

About a day after launch, the spacecraft is ready to perform a translunar injection, firing its engine and sending the Artemis II crew on their journey to the moon.

The route will take the crew to an area of ​​about 5,000 kilometers above the surface of the moon. The Apollo missions often orbited the moon at less than 100 miles (or less).

“When they pass the far side of the moon, they will look like a basketball held tall,” said Artemis II mission scientist Barbara Cohen. “It’s going to be that kind of feeling.”

Test, test

After parting ways with the rocket that launched them into space, but before heading to the moon, the crew tested the Orion spacecraft closer to home.

A few hours after entering the highway of the Earth, the crew did what is called a proximity operations test – controlling the car by hand to see how it works in space.

“We’re basically going to make sure the vehicle flies the way we think it’s going to fly,” Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said before the launch.

Controlling the spacecraft will be important for future missions, which will require landing on a lunar rover. And while this process may be automated, NASA wants to know how it works if astronauts have to take manual control.

“We also want to provide quality and quantitative feedback to the team on the ground, so let them know what it’s like now to be able to hear and hear the influencers, and understand the human experience,” said Glover.

Towards the end of the flight, the pilot appeared to give the car high signals.

“Overall guys, this is flying pretty well,” he told the crew on the ground.

Scientific time

Astronomy itself will be the subject of scientific experiments: As the crew goes deeper into space than anyone has ever done before, researchers are taking this opportunity to study the effect it will have on the human body.

Medical researchers will collect data on the body’s changes in response to space travel and increased radiation exposure. Astronomers’ cells are placed on small chips and distributed throughout the capsule – in order to fully understand these effects.

The crew will also provide their eyes for geological research, as they fly around the far side of the moon, where no one has gone before.

“They will be able to see places on the moon that, in fact, no human eye has ever seen,” Cohen said.

Geologists on Earth trained crews to spot unique features on the moon’s surface, and to photograph them for further study. (This follows a time-honored tradition: The Apollo astronauts who visited the moon more than half a century ago were also there. trained by geologists.) These visions will help them better understand that side of the moon, and maybe even help them plan how a person will live.

And the mission’s lunar flyby gives them a unique perspective.

“The benefits of that in science, it’s kind of like when you’re flying in an airplane, what you can see is the space below you. You don’t see the whole Earth. That’s what the Apollo astronauts did,” said Cohen. “The Artemis II astronomers will be able to see it from a great distance away.”

The project also transports stowaways in the form of CubeSats – small satellites that will orbit the upper world. The charges are from Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Argentina, and will study the various effects of atmospheric radiation on space equipment, monitoring space weather, and how the environment affects power tools on the moon.

Going home

When the crew returns home, their capsule will be traveling at close to 25,000 miles per hour as it enters space. The friction created by hitting the atmosphere at that speed will cause the Orion capsule to reach temperatures close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The capsule has a thermal shield to protect the astronauts from the intense heat of reentry. During a failed test flight in 2022, NASA discovered unexpected damage to the heat shield. To protect the crew even more, the capsule will hit the atmosphere at a higher speed than Artemis I, which will reduce the time it will face those harsh conditions.

Once the spacecraft has passed through the danger zone, eight parachutes will slow the spacecraft further before it plunges into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. A series of airbags will be deployed to ensure that the capsule is right side up. The crew will collect the astronauts and complete their mission.

What is learned from this flight is very important for the future missions of Artemis. Last week, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced plans to increase the frequency of launches to the moon, and a plan to establish a permanent base on the moon. That effort begins with Artemis II.

“It is our fervent hope,” said Artemis II mission scientist Christina Koch, “that this project is the beginning of an era where everyone, everyone on Earth, can look at the moon and consider it a destination.”