There are just a few days left until the start of a historic space mission: 54 years after the return of Apollo 17, NASA sends a rocket towards our satellite with three Americans and a Canadian on board.
It took nearly ten hours to transport the giant Artemis 2 mission rocket from the assembly building to the launch pad. More than two million people followed the event in live streaming, almost enchanted by the slow pace of the imposing Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle which at less than a couple of kilometers per hour carried the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft up to launch pad 39B of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A slow and historic journey
The 6.4 kilometer journey, all within the base, began yesterday around 1pm Italian time and ended when it was full night. This is an epochal event, since between next 6 and 11 February, or on the same dates in March, it will be with this gigantic rocket that humanity will return to the Moon after more than half a century, it was in fact 19 December 1972 when Apollo 17 returned to Earth after leaving our satellite.
The crew of Artemis 2
Now on Orion there will be NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, on a journey that will last ten days and which will take them around the Moon before returning. However, transporting the rocket to the ramp remains an event of great importance: once completed, NASA will carry out a series of checks on both the SLS and Orion, and one of the most important tests is a dress rehearsal with the rocket loaded with its cryogenic propellants, simulating the countdown to launch.
NASA’s decisive checks
This is expected to take place on February 2 and its outcome will help set the timing of the launch.
Nothing is taken for granted: it was precisely general tests like this one carried out for the Artemis 1 mission that revealed the presence of some leaks of liquid hydrogen, forcing NASA to bring the gigantic rocket back into the assembly building in order to solve the problem. And that was a fact that caused a significant delay in the launch.
From Artemis 1 to Artemis 2
Artemis 1 then managed to do its liftoff (this is what the liftoff of a rocket is called) bringing an uncrewed Orion capsule into lunar orbit and successfully re-entering it. It was November 16, 2022 and it all ended with the splashdown of Orion in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, four years ago. Artemis 2 will therefore repeat with modern technology what the astronauts of Apollo 8 did in 1968, that is, a mission which, together with those immediately following it, preceded those of the moon landings (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17), but making its crew fly in a much more comfortable environment.
Towards Artemis 3
And if everyone goes smoothly, the Artemis 3 astronauts will land on the moon next year.
The careers of the protagonists
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch are all on their second spaceflight, while Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen is making his debut. The mission will therefore see the presence in a lunar flight of the first black person, the first woman and the first non-US astronaut to go outside Earth orbit.
Reid Wiseman, a US Navy officer, was one of the test pilots of the F/A1Hornet aircraft and joined the NASA staff in 2009. In 2014 he was a member of the crew of the long-duration Expedition 40/41 mission on board the International Space Station (ISS) and upon his return he was head of the NASA Astronaut Office.
Victor Glover, also a Navy officer and test pilot, boasts over 400 career landings on an aircraft carrier, and is an aerospace engineer specializing in systems. His previous space trip occurred in 2020 as a pilot of the SpaceX Crew-1 mission.
Christina Koch, engineer and physicist, before joining NASA worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center and at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, as well as participating in scientific missions in Antarctica and Greenland. At NASA since 2013, she took part in the Expedition 59/60/61 mission from March 2019 to February 2020, remaining 328 days in space, a time in which she set a record for continuous stay for a woman and participating. All have experience in extravehicular activities (EVA).
Finally, Jeremy Hansen is a colonel and fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he was an instructor and squadron commander at Cold Lake Base. Having become an astronaut for the Canadian Agency (CSA) in 2009, he has experience in geological research in extreme environments.
