Countdown to the reconquest: humanity will set foot on the Moon again

The machinery is definitely in gear, and the conquest of the Moon about to begin. When the largest and most powerful rocket ever built by NASA takes its first flight this Monday, August 29 (if something goes wrong it will be retried on September 2 or 5), the first phase of the Artemis program will have begun, the detailed plan for man to step on our satellite again. But this time it will not be just a visit, as in the times of the Apollo program. This time we will go to the Moon to stay. If all goes according to plan, and after the countdown in two days, the enormous SLS launcher, 98 meters high, will begin to rise from launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the day 17 in a ‘trip’ of 1.6 km and 10 hours. Within two minutes of ignition its solid propellant will have been consumed, and six minutes later its liquid fuel will also have been depleted, at which point the rocket’s core stage will be jettisoned. Within 18 minutes of launch, the Orion spacecraft and the upper stage of the SLS rocket will make a full revolution around Earth. Orion will take 12 minutes to deploy its solar panels. Afterward, the spacecraft will head for the Moon. Desktop code Image for mobile, amp and app Mobile code AMP code 5360 APP code The plan speaks clearly: the first flight, Artemis 1, will not carry a crew and will serve to test the capabilities of the huge SLS launcher, as well as to analyze a large number of ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center and check that both the rocket and the Orion capsule, which will house the astronauts on future flights, work perfectly. It will be a journey of 42 days and 2.1 million km that will reach the Moon, orbit it (without landing on it) and then return to Earth to splash down next October 10 off the coast of San Diego, in the Peaceful. A few months later, Artemis 2 will do the same thing again, although this time with a human crew on board, who will not walk on the Moon either. It will be the last proof that everything is going as it should. And finally, in 2025, Artemis 3 will land on our satellite and astronauts, including a woman and a man of color, will set foot on it again for the first time since the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972. But that will only be the beginning. NASA has already prepared another seven flights, one per year, so that the successive crews can lay the foundations for a permanent lunar colony and start building Gateway, the first space station in lunar orbit. Ten secondary missions But let’s go back to Artemis 1. Because along with its main mission of testing the technology and propellants necessary for the adventure, those responsible for NASA have not wanted to give up doing some science. So the mission also carries another ten ‘payloads’ in the form of CubeSats to carry out secondary missions, including the search for water on the Moon, the launch of a mini satellite towards an asteroid or a variety of experiments to check how the human body reacts to a long exposure to the adverse conditions of space. Some of those missions, however, might not get off the ground, as launch delays have meant that the batteries of several of the CubeSats, trapped for an entire year inside the rocket, have been depleted to the point that it’s they may not even be able to boot. Of course, it would be a shame, because what is at stake is not just a series of scientific data, but the demonstration that these small (and cheap) ships of less than 15 kg are capable of carrying out successful deep space missions. . CubeSats are easy to assemble from standard parts, from inexpensive ion propulsion systems to tiny radio transmitters. This allows researchers to concentrate on developing any type of novel instrument, with the only limitation that they can reduce them to the right size to be integrated into a CubeSat. Searching for water on the Moon Two of these ‘extra payloads’ are Lunar IceCube and Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper, a pair of ‘CubeSats’ specially designed to locate possible water reserves on the Moon, something of the utmost importance for future long-term missions. duration, since the explorers will be able, in addition to having the water necessary to survive, to obtain from it breathable air and fuel for rockets. Lunar IceCube weighs only 14 kg and houses a Compact Broadband Infrared High Resolution Scanning Spectrometer (BIRCHES), which will search for water both on the lunar surface and in its exosphere, the thin layer of gases that surrounds the Moon in a very weak version of the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission will also test a new ion thruster, which, according to NASA, “works electrically using small amounts of thrust to give slight pushes to propel the spacecraft along its trajectory, similar to the flapping of a butterfly’s wings.” . The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map), for its part, will study areas with previously identified ice deposits. On the hunt for an asteroid Another of the CubeSats will tackle a completely different mission. Dubbed the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout, the small craft, unleashed by Artemis before reaching the Moon, will deploy an 86-square-meter solar sail to travel to asteroid 2020 GE. which will arrive in 2023, and study it in detail. 2020 GE is a 60-foot rock that orbits the Sun once every 368 days, and this will be the first time scientists have managed to study the smallest (and unknown) type of near-Earth asteroid in detail. To reach it, the small spacecraft will carry out a gravitational assist maneuver by passing by the Moon and using its gravitational ‘push’ to rocket towards its target. In 2023, when it reaches its destination, the small spacecraft will use its high-resolution cameras to obtain detailed images of the space rock, studying its shape, its rotation, the likely surrounding debris field and its surface features. In the words of Julie Castillo-Rogez, who directs the mission from the Jet Propulsion Lab, “NEA Scout will probably achieve the slowest flyby of an asteroid ever seen, at a speed of less than 30 meters per second. That will give us a few hours to collect invaluable scientific information, and allow us to see up close what asteroids of this class look like.” Living beings on the Orion Who said that there would be nothing alive on board Artemis 1? The CubeSat BioSentinel, directed by Sergio Santa María, a biologist at the NASA Ames Research Center, will transport 16 strains of yeast distributed in hundreds of microscopic containers, in what will be NASA’s first test to assess the effects of radiation on living organisms beyond Earth’s orbit since the last Apollo mission in 1972. Without the protection of Earth’s magnetic field, organisms’ DNA is more vulnerable to damage from solar flares and galactic cosmic rays, a real concern for astronauts traveling to the Moon or Mars. Yeast has been chosen precisely because its DNA bears significant similarities to that of humans. From a position in solar orbit beyond the Moon, BioSentinel’s optical sensors will measure the health of yeast strains as they accumulate radiation damage by measuring cell growth and metabolism. Commander Moonikin Campos There are no humans on board this time, but Artemis 1 will carry 54.4 kilograms of memorabilia, including toys, items from Apollo 11 and, most importantly, three mannequins. In the Orion commander’s seat will be Commander Moonikin Campos, a dummy capable of collecting data on what future human crews might experience on a lunar voyage. The mannequin will be wearing the new Orion Crew Survival System suit, designed for astronauts to wear during launch and re-entry. The suit has two radiation sensors. Also, two “ghosts” named Helga and Zohar will travel in the other seats of the Orion. These mannequin torsos are made from materials that mimic a person’s soft tissues, organs, and bones. In total, the two torsos have more than 5,600 sensors and 34 radiation detectors to measure radiation exposure during spaceflight. LEARN MORE James Webb photographs Eärendel, the farthest star ever observed A year of exploration on Mars: here’s what Perseverance has found so far Everything, then, is poised to write a new chapter in the history of space exploration. With this mission NASA’s Artemis program has officially started. And if all goes as expected, the next few years will bring us an ever faster succession of milestones culminating in a permanent lunar settlement, the first step in tackling the next mission: travel to Mars.