The Artemis II mission that will return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 was successfully launched at 6.36 am this morning from Cape Canaveral, United States. The mission was originally scheduled for February but was canceled due to a leak in the SLS rocket fuel tank.
Artemis II carries a four-person crew consisting of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. If all goes well, the mission will take 10 days.
At this time, the Orion space capsule, named Integrity, is still attached to the European Space Module (ESM) that supplies power using solar panels and is orbiting the Earth while awaiting the next step, which is the separation process.
The Integrity life support, sewage, communication and thrust systems will be tested within 24 hours before the translunar injection (TLI) ejection process is carried out to continue the 4-day journey to the moon. At the time of writing, the Artemis II crew reported an issue with the air circulation fan on Integrity’s solid waste disposal system. It is being resolved and if it fails, there is a backup system to continue the mission.
Once at the moon, Integrity will orbit it, traveling to the far side of the moon before returning to Earth. This journey will again take four days before the capsule lands on the surface of the Pacific Ocean on April 10 or 11, depending on the weather.
Artemis II has already set records as the most powerful crewed rocket mission in aerospace history and is on track to set five more records: the furthest journey from Earth ever made by humans (over 400,000 km), the first woman to orbit the moon, the first non-white person to orbit the moon, the first non-American astronaut to orbit the moon, and the first crew to be allowed to carry a personal smartphone around the moon.
