When the Orion Crew Capsule orbits the Moon there will be no one on board. But NASA’s Artemis 1 mission will mark a key step in bringing humans back to Earth’s dusty sidekick.
NASA/Bill Ingalls
NASA is going back to the Moon.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of Nov. 16, 2022. The rocket carried the Orion Crew Capsule as the centerpiece of the Artemis 1 mission. The journey to the Moon and back is a shakedown cruise with no people aboard – it will test how the Orion Crew Capsule holds up in space. The mission is a key step toward returning humans to the Moon after a half-century hiatus. The launch was initially scheduled for the morning of Aug. 29, 2022, but was postponed three times, twice for technical reasons and once for Hurricane Ian.
The spacecraft is scheduled to travel to the Moon, deploy some small satellites and then settle into orbit. NASA aims to practice operating the spacecraft, test the conditions crews will experience on and around the Moon, and assure everyone that the spacecraft and any occupants can safely return to Earth.
The Conversation asked Jack Burns, a professor and space scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and former member of the Presidential Transition Team for NASA, to describe the mission, explain what the Artemis program promises to do for space exploration, and reflect on how the space program has changed in the half-century since humans last set foot on the lunar surface.
Artemis 1 is the first flight of the new Space Launch System. This is a “heavy lift” vehicle, as NASA refers to it. It is the most powerful rocket engine ever flown to space, even more powerful than Apollo’s Saturn V system that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and ‘70s.
It’s a new type of rocket system, because it has both a combination of liquid oxygen and hydrogen main engines and two strap-on solid rocket boosters derived from the space shuttle. It’s really a hybrid between the space shuttle and Apollo’s Saturn V rocket.
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Testing is very important, because the Orion Crew Capsule is going to be getting a real workout. It will be in the space environment of the Moon, a high-radiation environment, for a month.
