The 10-day mission is the pathfinder for all manned missions to follow.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—For the first time in more than half a century, people around the world can look to the sky and know somewhere up there a crew of astronauts is on its way to the Moon.
They are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), and Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist).
At 6:35 p.m. ET on April 1, they charged off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the largest spacecraft built to carry humans into deep space and atop the most powerful human-rated rocket NASA’s ever constructed.
Their mission is Artemis II, a 10-day test flight around the moon and back. It is the first crewed flight of NASA’s flagship Artemis campaign to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a permanent international human presence there.
Mission Highlights
Artemis II’s flight plan is chock-full of different tests, checkouts, scientific experiments, and various other tasks, from setting up the first operational toilet to go to the moon to using the first exercise machine mandated on a lunar flight.
But there are some major milestones that folks following along from home should look out for.
Launch
Artemis II’s launch marked the first time astronauts flew aboard NASA’s behemoth moon rocket, the Space Launch System, and the new Orion crew capsule.
Four core-stage engines and two solid rocket boosters unleashed 8.8 million pounds of thrust—more than 1 million pounds of thrust more than the Apollo Program’s Saturn V.
The engine’s roar rose in volume with the visual brilliance of the controlled explosion as it pushed the vehicle into the Florida sky.
In less than 60 seconds, the moonship was supersonic.
After just eight minutes, the white solid rocket boosters and orange core stage burned all their fuel and fell back to Earth.
The rocket’s smaller, single-engine upper stage then assumed responsibility to place the Orion spacecraft into a unique elliptical high Earth orbit.
Manual Test Flight
Once in high Earth orbit, approximately three hours and 24 minutes after liftoff, the Orion spacecraft and its service module will separate from the second stage and perform a manual flight test. Glover will be at the controls and will attempt to maneuver the spacecraft back toward the separated rocket stage, as if it were the lunar landing spacecraft that will dock with the Orion spacecraft on future missions.
All four crew members will have a part to play in the demonstration. Wiseman will run the procedures while Glover will ensure that he has full directional control of the spacecraft and provide constant verbal feedback on how the spacecraft is handling compared to the simulations. Koch will monitor the timing of the procedure and stand by to lead any nonoptimal procedures if necessary. Hansen will keep an eye on the target, ready to call out any noticeable dangers and to get the crew to back away.
“It’s really a crew experience to fly that vehicle,” Glover said.
Live video of this procedure is expected to be available. Another manual test flight is expected to occur later in the mission.
Translunar Injection
This is what NASA calls the moment when a spacecraft flies beyond Earth’s orbit and sets off for the moon.
Approximately 25 hours into the mission, with Mission Control’s go-ahead, the main engine on the Orion’s service module will fire.
Artemis II will accelerate to approximately 25,000 miles per hour—the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravity—and begin a three-day journey to the moon. Aside from some course correction, this moon-bound engine burn will be the last major burn of the mission.
The crew will then be on a path called a “free return trajectory.” That means that it will pass by the moon at the correct speed and distance to perform a truly out-of-this-world U-turn.
Using free lunar gravity, Artemis II will essentially slingshot around the far side and head back to Earth without having to burn more fuel.
Eclipse
The crew will witness a full solar eclipse.
As the four astronauts cross the proverbial channel of deep space between the Earth and the moon, they will see their destination pass completely in front of the sun.
Hansen said he and his crew had just learned about this opportunity a little more than a week before launch, but praised NASA scientists for how they were able to rapidly prepare the astronauts to get the most data possible. Observations will be focused on confirming Apollo reports of how the sun and magnetic fields can actually pick up and move lunar dust across the moon, as well as examining the sun’s corona.
The Orion spacecraft is powered by solar panels fixed on its service module, so being out of the sunlight will put stress on the spacecraft’s power and thermal systems. Howard Hu, manager of NASA’s Orion program, told The Epoch Times that the spacecraft will remain sufficiently powered throughout the event.
Lunar Flyby
Artemis II will enter the moon’s gravity approximately four days into the mission, and then enter its U-turn-enabling flyby around the far side more than 12 hours later. For anyone watching from home, the flyby will take place on April 6. That is, if the crew is able to execute its translunar injection.
The successful April 1 launch means that Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen will set a new record for the farthest distance from the surface of the Earth reached by humans: 252,799 miles. That is 4,144 miles farther than the previous record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
They will then pass behind the far side of the moon at a much greater distance from the lunar surface than the preceding Apollo missions. That perspective is expected to allow the astronauts to see parts of the far side with human eyes for the very first time.
One of the sights they hope to see is the Orientale Basin.
“No one has ever seen this full crater on the far side of the moon, and so this would be really neat,” Hansen said. “I’m excited to have a look at it. It’s just enormous, super complex, and you could stare at it probably for hours.”
If they are successful in reaching lunar space, the four-person crew will also set a record for the largest crew to fly around the moon. All previous Apollo missions had three-person crews.
Communication With the Space Station
The crew have several tasks scheduled during their “cruise days,” as Koch called them, through deep space before and after the lunar flyby. One of those tasks will be having a ship-to-ship call with astronauts on board the International Space Station, including NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Chris Williams, and Jack Hathaway.
The goal is to have this communication while Artemis II is under the moon’s gravitational influence, marking the first time that ship-to-ship communication is shared between a spacecraft in lunar space and Earth orbit.
Reentry and Splashdown
Mission leaders anticipate that Artemis II will begin its reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere nine days and one hour after liftoff.
Separated from its service module and falling backward with its heat shield facing home, the Orion capsule Integrity will reach its top speed of the entire mission. That could be as fast as 39 times the speed of sound, or roughly 28,900 miles per hour.
Beginning its reentry at an altitude of 400,000 feet, Integrity will streak through the atmosphere like a comet and gently parachute into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California less than 15 minutes later.
Chief Flight Director Emily Nelson said that if the astronauts launch on April 1, they will splash down at roughly 5 p.m. PT on April 10. But the actual return time will ultimately be determined by the trajectory taken.
By T.J. Muscaro
