NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will soon announce the astronauts that will go on a voyage around the Moon as part of the Artemis II mission. The agencies will announce the crew of four on Monday, April 3rd, during a live broadcast that will begin at 11:00 a.m. ET (10:00 a.m. CT). The astronaut assignment event will take place at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. The assigned crew will include three NASA astronauts and one Canadian astronaut. You can watch the live broadcast via NASA Television, linked in the video below.
On April 3, you will meet the team of astronauts flying to the Moon on the #Artemis II mission.
— NASA (@NASA) March 28, 2023
These explorers will pave the way for future lunar landings and our next giant leap — human exploration of Mars. https://t.co/PRlRVEsJVz pic.twitter.com/BBlyhVJZNV
The Artemis program aims to pave the way for humanity to build a sustainable lunar base. Artemis II builds on the successful Artemis I flight test, which launched an uncrewed Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in December 2022. The 26-day Artemis I mission demonstrated the SLS and Orion capabilities when it successfully performed a 1.4 million-mile circumlunar journey to autonomously test all the spacecraft systems. The Artemis II mission will be similar but now with a crew that will fly around the Moon and back to Earth. Read more: NASA Orion Completes Artemis I Mission Around The Moon
“Artemis II will be the first crewed mission aboard NASA’s foundational human deep space capabilities: the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and the ground systems needed to launch them. The approximately 10-day mission will test and stress the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems to prove the capabilities and techniques required to live and work in deep space in ways only humans can do,” agency representatives shared in a press release. Artemis II is scheduled for lift off sometime in November 2024.
After the Artemis II mission is complete, NASA and SpaceX will collaborate to perform the Artemis III mission which will involve using SLS, Orion, and a lunar-optimized SpaceX Starship Human Landing System (SLS) to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2025. NASA believes it is important to form partnerships both internationally and in the private sector to increase success and have a robust space program that will benefit humanity as a whole. The SLS rocket was developed with the help from over 1,000 companies across the United States. And Starship is under development in South Texas by SpaceX. During the Artemis III mission, SLS will propel Orion to orbit with an international crew of four. Orion will fly to lunar orbit where Starship HLS will be waiting, then Orion will dock to Starship and two astronauts will transfer. Starship HLS will land a pair of astronauts on the lunar surface, while the other two monitor the week-long Moon exploration mission from lunar orbit aboard Orion.
WATCH IT LIVE!
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Featured Images Source: NASA
About the Author
Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
