Around 50 years ago, the last person to have walked on the moon – now the US space agency Nasa is pushing ahead with its next mission to the moon. A first unmanned test flight of the “Artemis” mission is scheduled to start on Monday (from 2:33 p.m. CEST). The “Orion” capsule is to take off from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome with the help of the “Space Launch System” heavy-duty rocket, then orbit the moon and land again in the Pacific around 40 days later.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were also expected to start in Cape Canaveral, the White House said. The rocket system had previously been extensively tested twice at the spaceport. Both times various problems had arisen. Nevertheless, NASA had given the green light for an unmanned test launch.
Before launch at Kennedy Space Center: The SLS rocket with the Orion space capsule on top.
(Photo: IMAGO/Ben Smegelsky/Nasa/IMAGO/ZUMA Wire)
With the “Artemis” mission, US astronauts were supposed to land on the moon again by 2024, including a woman for the first time. This is now planned for 2025 at the earliest. Four astronauts are to be taken to lunar orbit in the Orion spacecraft, where two of them will then transfer to a landing vehicle. A kind of space station is also to be created over the moon, also as a basis for a manned flight to Mars – but this will only happen in the distant future.
The last human to date was US astronaut Eugene Cernan, who died in 2017, on the Apollo 17 mission on the moon in December 1972. This time there are two dolls on board “Orion”: Zohar and Helga. This is a project with German and Israeli participation. It is being tested whether a protective vest developed in Israel can effectively protect a female body in particular from dangerous space radiation. For the “Artemis” mission more than 30 billion dollars are initially estimated. In addition to NASA and the European Space Agency Esa, the space agencies of several other countries are also involved.