NASA Set to Launch Crewed Moon Mission This February, Pioneering New Era of Space exploration
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA is poised to launch a groundbreaking crewed mission to the moon this February, marking a critical step towards establishing a long-term lunar presence. The Artemis II mission will send astronauts on a roughly 10-day journey, testing vital systems and paving the way for future lunar landings.
The mission begins with the launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will separate from the second stage, known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion system (ICPS), along with the Orion crew capsule. Once clear, Orion’s solar arrays will deploy to charge the spacecraft’s batteries, providing power during periods away from direct sunlight.
Ninety minutes into the flight, the ICPS will fire its engines to propel the vehicle into a higher Earth orbit, initiating a 25-hour period of comprehensive systems checks. if all systems are nominal, Orion will separate from the ICPS for a “Proximity Operations Exhibition” – a carefully choreographed “space ballet” where astronauts will manually maneuver Orion’s thrusters toward and away from the ICPS. This exercise will rehearse the critical docking procedures needed to connect with a lunar landing vehicle.
Twenty-three hours later,Orion’s service module will execute a Translunar Injection (TLI) burn,accelerating the spacecraft towards the Moon. The four-day journey will take the astronauts over 230,000 miles from Earth,during which they will continue to monitor and assess spacecraft performance.
The crew will also serve as “human guinea pigs,” participating in experiments designed to understand the effects of space travel on the human body. Scientists will compare tissue samples, known as organoids, grown from the astronauts’ blood before and after the mission.
“We want to be able to study in depth the effect of the microgravity and the radiation on these samples,” explained Dr. Nicky Fox, NASA’s head of science. “I’m certainly not going to dissect an astronaut! But I can dissect these little organoid samples and really look at the difference.”
Following a lunar flyby, the spacecraft will begin its four-day return journey, utilizing Earth’s gravity to assist in the trajectory. Upon re-entry, the service module will detach, and the astronauts will parachute to a landing off the coast of California.
The success of Artemis II is crucial for determining the timeline of Artemis III, the mission intended to land astronauts on the Moon. Though,Dr. Simeon Barber of the Open University cautions that NASA’s stated goal of “no earlier than mid-2027” is optimistic.
“‘No earlier than’ is familiar language for NASA, and it means just that. That’s the earliest possibility,” Dr. Barber said, citing the expense of maintaining the program’s schedule. He also pointed to ongoing progress challenges with SpaceX’s Starship, the vehicle slated to transport astronauts to and from the lunar surface, noting it “still has a long way to go before it can even achieve an orbital flight around the Earth, let alone put astronauts on board.”
