On Wednesday, NASA announced that Artemis-1, the first mission by Americans to travel to the moon, could depart on August 29, the day humans first set foot on the moon 53 years ago. Alternate dates are September 2 or 5.
The Artemis program aims, as soon as 2025, to get people back to the moon again and get them back, with a woman and a person of color for the first time. NASA wants to achieve this step by step, by analogy with the Apollo program.
So Artemis will be an unmanned mission, in particular to test the new massive launch vehicle, as well as the Orion capsule that will be launched on the second mission in 2024.
The launch will take place in Cape Canaveral. The SLS launcher is supposed to bombard Orion at our natural satellite. The capsule enters orbit around the Moon and then returns to Earth.
Depending on the exact launch date, the flight will take from 39 to 42 days.
Orion was already tested in space in 2014, after being launched with a Delta-IV launcher. The capsule made two orbits around our planet, in particular to test the heat shield. The last time a human walked on the moon was with Apollo 17 in 1972.
