NASA sets 2024 for astronauts to travel to lunar orbit on Artemis II

POT tightened its mission launch date Artemis II with astronauts into lunar orbit by November 2024.

At a press conference on Tuesday, agency representatives said that everything they learned during the first unmanned iteration of the mission Sagebrush puts on POT on the way to sending astronauts to Moon for the first time in over half a century in about 18 months.

Next destination: Luna

This week, after carefully reviewing mission data Artemis I After the splashdown, officials from the space agency confirmed that while there were some minor problems with the flight, overall it bolstered confidence.

As a result, the head of the department of human exploration of deep space POTJim Free said the agency is planning an “late November” 2024 mission. Artemis II.

During this flight, four astronauts, likely to include a Canadian, will spend just over a week in deep space. After testing Orion’s performance in low Earth orbit, the spacecraft will fly a so-called “free return path” around Earth. Moonwhich will bring them within 7,500 km of its surface before returning.

POT waiting to call the mission team Artemis II to late this spring. They will be the first humans to fly beyond low Earth orbit in more than 50 years, since the end of the Apollo program in December 1972.

If POT succeed in the mission Artemis IIwill pave the way for the landing of a manned lunar mission in the second half of the 2020s.

Debate: heat shield

Perhaps the most prominent topic discussed at the press conference was the operation of Orion’s heat shield, which protects the spacecraft as it returns through Earth’s atmosphere at high speed. This became one of the key tests during Artemis Ias cars returning from Moon they do so at about 40,000 km/h, about 30% faster than a vehicle normally returning from low Earth orbit.

“During the inspections, more heat shield options were found than we expected,” said Howard Hu, Orion Program Manager at POT. “Some parts of the charred rock were not shed as predicted by our computer models and our ground tests. More char was released during re-entry than we expected.”

In this case, there was still enough room left in Orion’s ablative material, meaning that the heat shield’s unexpected behavior did not pose a danger to the spacecraft. But POT you want to refine your simulation of this behavior to get a good idea of ​​what to expect on future missions.

We recommend you METADATA, an RPP technology podcast. News, analytics, reviews, recommendations and everything you need to know about the world of technology.