Cape Canaveral, US, Apr 1 (EFE).-
NASA’s Artemis II mission reached Earth orbit on Wednesday, about 10 minutes after launching from Florida to begin its 10-day journey around the moon. This is the first such trip in over 50 years.
The four astronauts on the crew will first orbit Earth for about 24 hours to test systems and decide whether to continue the path toward the Moon, a trip that would take another four days, as explained by NASA.
If successful, the crew will arrive at the Moon’s far side on Monday, April 6. They will reach the farthest point in deep space ever reached by humans, over 400,000 kilometers away.
The crew is composed of Commander Reid Wiseman, Specialist Christina Koch, and Pilot Victor Glover, all three from NASA, as well as Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). According to the NASA blog on the mission, the travelers had a “scheduled wake-up call at 9:25 a.m.”
Under favorable weather conditions, the four Artemis II crew members, whose mission will not involve a Moon landing, lifted off about 11 minutes later than scheduled at 6:35 pm local time from the Kennedy Space Center.
Moments before the launch, there was some tension as technicians resolved an issue with a sensor that showed an out-of-range battery temperature and fixed a problem with the communications system.
However, there were no major setbacks, such as those that delayed the launch for a month in February. This allowed NASA’s largest and most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), to finally lift off with the crew aboard the Orion capsule.
The 10-day mission aims to be the first to reach the Moon’s orbit since Apollo 17, launched in December 1972.
This is the second mission of the Artemis program, following the uncrewed flight in 2022, and precedes upcoming missions in which astronauts hope to land on the Moon in 2028 and begin establishing a permanent presence on the natural satellite with a base, in addition to setting the conditions for the exploration of Mars. EFE
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