Despite multiple delays that occurred previously, the Artemis I mission was a great success that made us start thinking already about Artemis II and Artemis III. In case you don’t remember, the Artemis program, launched by NASA during the Trump administration, is the most ambitious project of the US space agency since the days of the Apollo program, with which it coincides in one of its key points: return to take the human being to the Moon, more than fifty years after we stepped on our natural satellite for the last time.
Although they never took place, more Apollo missions were initially scheduled than went down in history in the late 1960s and 1970s. Budget cuts and, above all, the feeling that the main objective had already been achieved (beating the Soviet Union in the space race) put an end to manned missions to the Moon and, indirectly, also meant the end of of any plans for a manned mission to any other planet in our solar system.
Artemis, as I said before, agrees with Apollo regarding «boots on the moon«, a phrase that has become popular to refer to the human presence on the Moon, but it goes further, with the still difficult but not impossible objective of bring humans to the surface of Mars sometime in the next decade. There are many challenges that will have to be faced to make this goal a reality, but there are more than enough reasons for hope.
But for now we are going to return to the closest objectives that, however, are also very interesting, and that is that today there has been an expected announcement, since NASA has introduced the official crew of the Artemis II mission. Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, three from NASA and one (Hansen) from the Canadian Space Agency, who on the back of the Orion mounted on the SLS, will fly in November 2024 to lunar orbit. The objective is to reproduce the itinerary of Artemis I, but this time in a manned mission.
At this point it is important to remember that no, Artemis II’s target is not the surface of the Moonsince such a milestone will be the task of Artemis III, still without a specific date, although tentatively sometime in 2025. The objective of Artemis II is to evaluate the Orion systems and confirm, in this way, that the ship is ready for launch. later the future crew members can put their boots on the Moon.
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