Three Americans and a Canadian will take place in 2024 aboard the Artemis 2 mission capsule. They will have to test key technologies around the Moon to envisage a real return to the lunar surface.
During a major American show, NASA presented the crew on Monday in Houston intended to return to the Moon in 2024, a feat that has not been repeated since Apollo 17 in 1972. This Artemis mission does not will not go to the surface of our satellite, but will go around it to validate some of the technologies needed to land there. Called one by one by Bill Nelson, NASA boss, former astronaut and former senator, the four astronauts, three Americans and a Canadian, took the stage to the applause of an enthusiastic audience.
The commander and pilot of Artemis 2 are two former US Navy fighter pilots, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover. They will be accompanied by Christina Koch, who has an engineering background and will be the first woman to orbit the Moon. The crew will be completed by Canadian Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot in the Canadian Air Force, who will make his first flight in space. Its place aboard the Orion capsule was obtained thanks to the contribution of the Canadian Space Agency, which is building a robotic arm, the Canadarm 3, intended for the future station which will be placed in orbit around the Moon, the Lunar Gateway.
Places for Europeans
The European Space Agency (ESA) is negotiating places for its own astronauts. They will participate in Artemis in exchange for a crucial contribution to the missions, the service module which provides oxygen and fuel, essential for the proper functioning of the capsule. Two places have already been allocated to Europeans for Artemis 4 and 5, but without guarantee of reaching the surface of the Moon. Negotiations today relate to a place from Artemis 3, as well as the assurance of going to the Moon before the end of the decade.
After Artemis 2, the next stage will be the great return to the surface. Officially, this highlight, which should see the first woman set foot on the lunar soil, is still scheduled for 2025 in NASA’s calendar. But this schedule seems very optimistic, and the office of the Inspector General of NASA (a kind of Court of Auditors of the space agency) had estimated that the moon landing could not take place before mid-2026 and that the most probable was a delay of just over three years, both for the moon landing craft and for the new suits designed to withstand lunar conditions.
Artemis 2 must validate the first crucial phases of the following missions. NASA’s plan calls for the crew of Artemis 2 to take off from Earth aboard an Orion capsule, carried by an SLS rocket, as for Artemis 1. To limit the risks, its passengers will “content” with a large loop around our satellite before returning to Earth.
The very ambitious Artemis also aims to build the first fully reusable rocket. This project was launched by Elon Musk with the objective of being able to land on any body in the Solar System, and in particular on Mars. Today, only the first stage of Falcon 9 is recovered by SpaceX, the second stage being lost with each flight. For the lunar program, not only the first stage, Super Heavy, will be recovered, but also the Starship spacecraft, installed at the top of the rocket. The astronauts will have to, from Artemis 3, transfer to this vessel placed in orbit around the Moon, and which will serve as a lander. But the craft has not yet been tested in space. However, to everyone’s surprise, it was this innovative but also technologically very risky spacecraft that had been selected by NASA for its major program to return to the Moon.
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Starship, contribution cruciale de SpaceX
The first orbital flight of a Starship spacecraft is expected for the next few weeks, with the giant Super Heavy rocket which must carry it in preparation at the SpaceX space base in Boca Chica, Texas, a few kilometers from the border. with Mexico. Even if this first flight were to succeed, there would still be many steps to validate before NASA gives the green light for a manned moon landing. In particular, it will be necessary to prove that the machine is capable of landing on the Moon, and taking off again. But before that, SpaceX will also have to successfully refuel its spacecraft in orbit, with a refueling system that has never been tested on such a large scale.
Start of training for future European astronauts
By a coincidence of the calendar, the next European astronauts begin their training in Cologne (Germany) on the precise day when NASA presents the crew of the Artemis 2 mission.astronaut candidatesfrom the European Space Agency (ESA) are the French Sophie Adenot, the Briton Rosemary Coogan, the Spaniard Pablo Alvarez Fernandez, the Belgian-Luxembourgish Raphaël Liégeois and the Swiss Marco Sieber. They will be accompanied by the Australian Katherine Bennell-Pegg, who will do a first year of training with them at the ESA center in Cologne. Their initial program will be quite general, with courses in astronautics, foreign languages, science and learning about the systems on board the International Space Station, which will be their first objective before hoping one day to be part of a mission. to the moon with the Americans. Once selected for a specific mission, they will undergo more targeted additional training, intended to familiarize them with the ship or capsule they will occupy.