NASA’s successful launch Artemis I moon mission
Photo from Bill Ingalls, NASA
Edited by Yujin Tchun
On November 16th, 2022, many watched the launch of Orion, NASA’s Artemis I moon mission - NASA’s first return to the moon since 50 years ago in 1972. Ironically it was fittingly named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Moon and the sister of the sun god, Apollo, which was the name of the program that sent humans to the moon for the first time.
NASA’s goal through this mission is to discover how to live on the moon and even to send people to inhabit Mars. As said by Bill Nelson, a NASA administrator, “Now we are going back to the moon, not just for the sake of going to the moon but to learn how to live on the moon in order to prepare to send humans all the way to Mars”.
The flight craft stands 322 feet tall or about 98 meters tall and is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built. Despite weighing 5.75 million pounds or about 2.6 million kilograms, it ascended 500 feet or about 152 meters in only 7 seconds. Although this 4 to 6-week-long roundtrip circling the moon and back has no astronauts on board, they plan to send the first woman and person of color to land on the lunar south pole by 2025 or 2026. By day 6 of the Artemis I mission, Orion already captured spectacular images of the moon’s surfaces.
As Bill Nelson watched the launch from the roof of the rocket assembly building, he said that “This is the next beginning, this is the Artemis generation.”
Sources:
