With NASA's first launch to the Moon in five decades perhaps in just a few monthsThe space agency has just released the first episode of a new show dedicated to the highly anticipated mission.
Moonbound – charting a course runs 22 minutes and offers a deep dive into preparations for the 10-day Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts around the Moon and back.
NASA is using the mission as the first crewed test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, paving the way for the Artemis 3 crewed lunar landing, which could take place as early as 2027.
The space agency launched a rocket and spacecraft for the first time on the successful Artemis I mission in 2022.
“When you send a crew on a rocket, it’s no longer a test flight,” John Honeycutt, chairman of the mission management team, says in the video. “This one needs to work, and it will work as well or better than the first one… there's no doubt about it.”
At the 12:10 mark, the video details the exact course the Artemis II mission is expected to take, including the Kennedy Space Center launch, flyby of the Moon, and splashdown in the ocean.
After several days in elliptical Earth orbit to test the performance of the Orion capsule under manual control, the crew will head toward the Moon, passing just 3,300 miles from the lunar surface as it circles our closest neighbor.
“We're going to deploy the spacecraft so that you have the best view of the moon in 50 years,” said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead mission director. “We want to make sure we get the videos from the Moon that all of us here on Earth want to see, and ensure that all of our systems work on the far side of the Moon.”
The mission will culminate in a critical splashdown following high-speed re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. This may be the most important part of the mission, as the Artemis I mission revealed some problems with Orion's heat shield that NASA has been working to resolve.
Looking to the future, NASA wants to use the Artemis program to build a base on the moon for expanded human missions and apply knowledge gained from lunar missions to plan the first crewed flight to Mars.
Moonbound – charting a course is free to view on NASA website.
