After 50 years of absence from the moon, the Artemis programme aims to return humans back to the moon by 2025 with the long-term goal of establishing a permanent lunar base on the moon itself.
On Monday, the Artemis I mission is planned for lift-off between 8.33am and 10.33am ET, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, with backup windows scheduled for September 2 and 5. The Orion spacecraft will be launched using NASA’s SLS rocket, which will lift off with a whopping 8.8 million pounds of thrust, following in the footsteps of the Saturn V rocket, used to launch the Apollo missions, which launched with 7.6 million pounds of thrust.
Artemis I will be an uncrewed mission, which will embark upon a 2.1-million kilometre journey to the moon and back, over the course of 42 days. The Orion spacecraft will enter a retrograde orbit around the moon, reaching 64,000 kilometres past its far side in the process, and then returning to earth with a splash down on October 10 in the Pacific Ocean, off the San Diego coast.
The Orion spacecraft is designed to carry a human crew into deep space and back
A suited mannequin, which will collect data on what future astronauts on the mission will likely experience, will fill the commander seat, together with some other 54.4 kilograms worth of mementos from Apollo 11 and other mannequins.
The Orion spacecraft is designed to carry a human crew into deep space and back, with a launch abort system that is capable of taking the spacecraft to safety if any emergency should occur during launch. In addition, it will be able to test its heat shield, which will need to withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees upon re-entering earth’s atmosphere at Mach 32.
Apart from paving the way for future Artemis programme missions, which will indeed lead to the return of humans on the lunar surface by 2025, Artemis I shall also carry a scientific experiment payload.
The goals of the entire Artemis programme involve, in the short term, the landing of diverse crews of astronauts on the moon and the exploration of the lunar south pole for the first time. The long-term goals of the Artemis mission involve the setting up of a permanent lunar base with sustained human presence on the lunar surface, as well as setting up a base of operations for future missions that will see human exploration of Mars and beyond.
Josef Borg completed a PhD in astronomy at the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy, University of Malta. He is currently a researcher at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University and also Malta’s representative on the European Astrobiology Network Association council.