Last Sunday, as you will remember, the Artemis I mission was completed, with the splashdown of the Orion spacecraft exactly in the scheduled place at the scheduled time. A return that put an end to a trip that had begun 25 days before, on November 16, A very important mission for various reasons, and whose success opens the doors to a more than promising space future, after a few decades in which it seemed that only the commercial exploitation of the Earth’s orbit shook the interest of the parties involved.
As we have already told on some occasions, Artemis is the most ambitious project undertaken in decades by NASA, in collaboration with other agencies such as ESA, what’s more, we can affirm that it is the most ambitious in history, if it finally ends up meeting all the objectives initially set. And it is that the Artemis I mission has been a first test, but let us remember that the global objectives are for the human being to set foot on the Moon again throughout this decade, ideally as soon as 2025, and to take the first human being to another planet, Mars, sometime in the next decade.
If you have followed the development of the mission from the beginning, you will know that it has suffered multiple delays, mainly due to problems with the SLS (Space Launch System), the new NASA launcher with which the US space agency recovers its mission years later. independence in terms of having its own launch system, something that had not happened since the space shuttle program was terminated.
With Artemis I successfully completed, it is time to start preparing Artemis II, which will be the first manned mission of the project, and which will take Orion back into orbit of the Moon, although not yet to its surface. However, and although all the personnel involved are already working on it, there is nothing wrong with looking back for a moment, to experience some satisfaction with the review of the best moments of this first and successful mission.
To this end, the European Space Agency (ESA) has published a video in which it concentrates, in just over a minute, some of the best moments and images of Artemis I, from its takeoff from Cape Canaveral to splashdown in Pacific waters. A video in which in about 70 seconds (excluding the part of it that is not specific to the mission, but generic to the space agency), which I recommend you watch in full screen, you will be able to live (or relive, if you have already followed Artemis I during its development) Orion’s approach to the Moon, its orbit around our natural satellite and other remarkable moments.
And once it’s over, if you want to look again in the future, I’m sure you’ll also like to watch this second video, also from ESA, in which you’ll be able to see a recreation of the entire service module mission, the agency’s primary contribution to this program mission.
