NASA’s Artemis I mission will take off shortly , marking the first serious effort to bring humans to the lunar surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972 . However, in this mission there will be no crew , since their objective will be precisely to test all the systems that will make this return possible (and safe). The launch has had to be postponed several times due to technical difficulties and will take off on September 19 at the earliest. So, if there is not going to be a moon landing, what exactly will the mission consist of?
This mission, in addition to fulfilling the more immediate goal of landing humans back on the Moon , is the first in a series of missions that will pave the way for human exploration of deep space and to ensure a lasting presence on our satellite and beyond. . To this end, during the Artemis I mission, the new deep space exploration systems developed in recent years are intended to be tested for the first time. On the one hand, there is the Orion spacecraft , designed to take astronauts to the Moon and even, with modifications and some extra modules, to Mars. On the other hand, the SLS system (or Space Launch System), which has been expressly designed for these missions and will be the direct successor to the Space Shuttle and NASA’s main launch system during this decade .
The SLS system is currently the most powerful rocket in the world , although it will be surpassed in the near future when SpaceX’s Starship becomes operational. In this mission several records will be broken, if everything goes as planned. In the first place, this will be the spacecraft designed for use by astronauts that goes the farthest from our planet (up to 450,000 kilometers), will have the longest duration for a mission of this type (just over 42 days) and will enter the atmosphere before landing at a speed of about 11 kilometers per second .
After liftoff and separation from the main rocket stage, the Orion spacecraft will deploy its solar panels and cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) to give the spacecraft a big push that will put it on its way to the Moon . About two hours after liftoff, Orion and ICPS will part ways, with ICPS launching a series of miniature satellites, CubeSats , that will carry out various experiments and measurements.
From then on, the Orion spacecraft will receive its fuel and electrical energy from a service module designed by the European Space Agency , which in future missions will also carry water and air for the equipment on board. Once it has passed the Van Allen radiation belts, the GPS satellite constellations, and is far enough from Earth, it will switch to communicating with Earth through NASA’s Deep Space Network , designed to communicate with probes. who travel to the outer planets of the solar system, but also for missions like this.
When it reaches our satellite, the Orion spacecraft will skim its surface, passing just 100 kilometers above it , to later place itself in an orbit that will take it to a calmer 70,000 kilometers away. Here it will remain for about 6 days, loaded with experiments and technical checks, to later skim the lunar surface again as the last maneuver before returning to Earth . The result will be that the Orion spacecraft will head straight for Earth, entering its atmosphere at a speed of about 11 km/s and reaching temperatures of up to 2,800 ºC on its hull .
When it lands after traveling more than two million kilometers in the course of its mission , it will be recovered from the sea and inspected down to the last detail, to find out if it is ready to host humans on a similar mission, the Artemis II, which would be planned for the next year.
Throughout the Artemis program, the Orion spacecraft and SLS launch system will evolve to grow from an initial mission payload of about 26 tons to payloads of up to 45 tons. However, the first manned landing of the program is planned to be done with the Starship system of the private American company SpaceX . After that first moon landing, the main objective of the Artemis program will focus on the construction of the Gateway space station , located in lunar orbit and designed to serve as a link between the Earth’s surface and the lunar surface , facilitating access to the latter. This space station will have several modules that will be assembled over successive missions.
NASA’s current goal is to maintain a rate of at least one Artemis mission per year until the completion of the Gateway station and then proceed to the construction of a permanent base on the surface of our satellite. This last phase of the program, still to be defined beyond general lines, would take place not before the beginning of the 2030s.
References:
Kathryn Hambleton, 2021, Around the Moon with NASA’s First Launch of SLS with Orion, NASA
Artemis I: about the mission, 2022, NASA
