From CBS News: After weeks of delays, NASA is finally poised for the launch of a historic flight this week to send a crew of four astronauts on a trailblazing nine-day trip around the moon and back.
The Artemis II mission — with commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — is scheduled to lift off Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 p.m. EDT, atop a Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful operational booster in the world.
NASA began its launch countdown on Monday afternoon, and forecasters are predicting an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch.
“Hey, let’s go to the moon!” Wiseman told reporters as the crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday. “I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again.”
The test mission is full of firsts. This will be the rocket’s first flight with a crew aboard, and it will be the first piloted flight of an Orion deep space crew capsule.
“This is a test mission,” Wiseman said. “When we get off the planet, we might come right back home. We might spend three or four days around Earth. We might go to the moon. That’s where we want to go, but it is a test mission, and we are ready for every scenario as we ride this amazing Space Launch System in the Orion spacecraft, 250,000 miles away. It’s going to be amazing!”
It’s a big step toward a future moon landing, and a major milestone in a new NASA space race with China.
Orion will perform a critical “trans-lunar injection” burn 25 hours after launch, increasing its velocity to exit Earth’s orbit and begin its four-day journey to the moon. Once there, astronauts will not land on the moon or enter lunar orbit. Instead, the Artemis II crew will use lunar gravity for a “free return” trajectory back to Earth.
Artemis II astronauts will be the first humans to see large regions of the moon’s far side with 21% illuminated. Apollo missions were timed to ensure daylight at the landing sites facing Earth, and the far side was in darkness. The Artemis II crew will see portions of the far side never seen by human eyes.
“Four people, two windows pointing right at the lunar surface, and a highly choreographed dance, really, of who has the cameras, who has the other voice recording devices, and how we are supporting the people actually taking the data and making the observations,” Koch said.
“Of course, the moon has been imaged by so many remote sensing satellites, but there are actually places on the far side that have never been seen by human eyes. … So hopefully, when we get there, we’ll be ready to take that on and still make the most of those couple hours we have.”
Read more at CBS News
The Dennis Michael Lynch Podcast archive is available below, with the most recent on top. Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show by downloading The DML News App or go to Apple Podcasts.
