The Artemis 1 mission will be able to take off on August 29 from the Kennedy Space Center. This is the first preparatory flight for the return of American astronauts to the Moon.
“We are ready”. After carrying out its flight readiness review, NASA, the American space agency, confirmed on August 22 that everything was in order for the takeoff of Artemis 1 on August 29, from 2:33 p.m. Paris.
This first unmanned mission will aim to assess whether a flight with a crew is possible. If all goes according to plan, the Artemis 2 mission, scheduled for 2024, could carry astronauts into lunar orbit before landing for the Apollo 3 mission.
Artemis 1 will thus make it possible to qualify the SLS launcher (Space Launch System), that is to say the 98-meter rocket, and the Orion capsule placed at its top. For this, NASA intends to push the Orion Service Module (ESM), provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), beyond what it will be required to do during manned flight. The mission will last 42 days, twice as long as planned. Note also that Orion is a reusable capsule.
Three mannequins before the astronauts
Artemis 1 will also be used to “test the heat shield” and to “check its behavior at the speeds reached during atmospheric re-entry”, explained Bob Cabana, associate administrator of NASA. An atmospheric re-entry which will take place at 40,000 km/h. Finally, Orion will be uninhabited, of course, but three mannequins covered with sensors will be installed there. They will make it possible to observe the effects of the launch or even that of space radiation and the effectiveness of a radiation protection vest.
In the event of the postponement of the launch scheduled for August 29, the following firing windows are set for September 2 and 5, then September 20. Let’s hope all the same that the orange and white machine which has already been on the Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39B for a week will be able to launch as soon as possible, in front of the 100 to 200,000 spectators expected on site.