Moon: Nasa will return with the Artemis 1 mission from August 29 – Science

Artemis 1, the first unmanned mission of the American program to return to the Moonwould take off as soon as August 29, the space agency announced on Wednesday. Nasa.

The ship will thus make the first of a series of flights with which the United States intends to return to the Moon with a human crew, establish a sustained presence there and use the experiences gained to plan a trip to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

(You may be interested: James Webb: The telescope has a hard drive of only 68 GB)

NASA director Jim Free told reporters that the first window of possible release datesor for the gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) and the docked capsule Orion are on August 29, September 2 and September 5.

The latest tests in June reached 90% of the targets and on Wednesday Cliff Lanham, head of the spacecraft division, said engineers had fixed flaws causing hydrogen loss from the launch system.

(Also read: NASA reveals a map of what the heat waves that hit the planet look like)

Artemis 1 will travel around the far side of the Moon on a mission that will last four to six weeks, longer than any manned spacecraft has ever gone without docking. It will then return to Earth faster and hotter than all previous spacecraft.

It will also deploy small satellites called CubeSats to carry out space experiments. “Our first and foremost goal is to expose Orion’s heat shield to lunar recovery conditions,” said Mike Sarafin, mission leader.

(Also: They identify the place where the most famous meteorite on Mars came from)

On his return, the capsule will travel at about 39,400 km/h and will experience temperatures half as hot as those of the Sun. The second objective is to verify the solvency of the rocket and capsule flight during the mission.

Finally, NASA will seek to recover Orion after its splashdown and then thoroughly review it. The next flight will be that of Artemis 2, which will be manned, but the astronauts will not leave the ship.. On its side, Artemis 3 will later carry the first woman and the first black person to lunar soil.