Context:
NASA recently announced the crew that will fly aboard its Artemis II mission.
Relevance:
GS II: Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- About Artemis II Mission
- Artemis I
About Artemis II Mission
- First human mission to the moon’s vicinity since 1972.
- Second scheduled flight of the Artemis program and the first crewed Artemis mission.
- Four astronauts will fly around the moon and return to Earth.
- The Space Launch System (SLS) mega-rocket and Orion spacecraft will be used to launch the crew on the lunar flyby mission.
- Astronauts and mission controllers will collect data on Orion and the crew’s performance to assess the readiness of the Artemis program for future moon surface missions.
Artemis Program:
- It is NASA’s program to return astronauts to the Moon, preparing the way for human missions to Mars.
- It aim to “land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon”, explore the lunar surface.
- The Artemis program includes the construction of the Lunar Gateway space station in orbit around the Moon.
Artemis I:
- An uncrewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on November 16, 2022.
- It is the first in a series of missions that are planned to not only take humans back to the Moon, but to also explore the possibilities of extended stay there, and to investigate the potential to use the Moon as a launch pad for deep space explorations.
- The Artemis missions will build on the existing achievements of space technologies over the past few decades, and lay the foundations for more complex and ambitious missions in the future.
- It will work towards extracting the resources found on the Moon, build from the materials available there, and harness hydrogen or helium as energy sources.
-Source: The Hindu
