Image: NASA.
NASA is about to kick off its Artemis mission, a multi-stage quest to send astronauts to the moon again. As the agency nears the launch date for Artemis I – an unmanned flight around the Moon – it is also preparing its astronauts to spend time on the lunar surface.
Preparations for going to the Moon are as intense as you’d expect: the NASA team of 42 astronauts and 10 astronaut candidates undergo rigorous training, which includes studying rocky terrain in places like Iceland, extended stays at the bottom of a swimming pool and virtual reality simulations.
NASA has not yet decided which astronauts will go to the Moon. However, the agency recently indicated that it plans to launch the Artemis II mission in 2024. This mission will send astronauts for a test flyby of the Moon, making it the first crewed mission to go beyond the Moon. low Earth orbit since 1972. Then, in 2025, NASA is expected to launch the Artemis III mission, which will send the first woman and the first person of color to the surface of the Moon.
“Thinking on the scale of geological time”
The Artemis program does not stop there, said NASA chief astronaut Reid Wiseman last week. After that, the program is designed to allow “early humans to travel to Mars, follow in our footsteps, build science labs, and inhabit another planet.”
“To me, this is the most impressive moment we’ve had here at NASA,” he added.
During a press briefing, the astronaut described the elements of astronaut training. First, they spend time with the military, practicing landing a helicopter in the snow.
“To land on the Moon or Mars, we’re going to have to descend pretty much vertically,” he explained. “Whether it’s SpaceX’s Option A building their human moon lander that we’re going to fly, or other contractors coming in line for subsequent missions, we’re almost certainly going to come down to the vertical. »
NASA participated in a European training session a few months ago called Pangea, which helped them prepare to study lunar geology. According to Reid Wiseman, the agency needs to think about how it will obtain lunar rock samples, store them, and catalog them for scientists on Earth.
“It’s a totally different way of thinking about the scale of geological time. The agency also trains extensively in Iceland, he added, believing it to be a “very good analogue of the lunar surface.”
Virtual reality to land at the South Pole of the Moon
Next, NASA astronauts use their virtual reality lab to prepare to land at the South Pole of the Moon.
“If you’ve ever looked at the Moon at night, the South Pole has a very weird solar angle – with very weird light hitting it,” the astronaut points out. “There are permanently shaded regions, and we’ve developed in the VR world what that actually looks like, with the exact angle of the Sun that we’re going to land on. »
Reid Wiseman continues, “The lower half of your body may be in pitch black, and the upper half may be in blinding sunlight. How shadows are cast on the lunar surface literally changes everything. So we can go into this virtual reality world for 10 minutes and answer 1000 questions. »
From the pool to the moon
For another simulated experience, NASA is currently equipping the Orion Crew Simulator at the Johnson Space Center. It will be ready later this year and will prepare the crew to fly aboard the Orion spacecraft.
Just 10 minutes north of Johnson Space Center, astronauts train at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab – a very large pool where astronauts have been training for spacewalks from the International Space Station for two decades. .
“We’re taking part of that pool and looking at what it would be like to be on the moon, to spend six hours in a lunar-class spacesuit doing research at the bottom of a pool,” the astronaut explains.
Teamwork and representation
Of course, NASA also has astronauts aboard the ISS – there are currently four of them – who are also preparing them for the trip to the Moon.
Reid Wiseman explains that the agency hopes to choose the astronauts who will fly aboard Artemis II later this year. For all Artemis missions, the agency will consider above all technical expertise, “the ability to immerse yourself in any situation, any technical need of the vehicle, to understand when things are not going quite well, and to understand when they are well”.
In addition, he added, NASA is looking for people who can work as a team, with each other and with flight directors. The astronaut also stressed the importance of sending a diverse crew to the Moon, also noting that the new class of astronauts represents “all walks of life”.
“Our job at NASA is to do hard and fair things and to motivate our base, which is our youth,” he said. “And right now, our country is a diverse and extremely wealthy country. (…) We want every child to look at our poster and think: “Oh, I see myself in this, I can do this one day”. »
Source: ZDNet.com