Artemis: Nasa ready to launch new era of Moon exploration

T-38 planes, a fixture of astronaut training at Nasa, fly over the SLS on launchpad 39B at Kennedy

The American space agency is counting down to the lift-off of its giant new Moon rocket - the Space Launch System. 

SLS is the most powerful vehicle ever developed by NASA and will be the foundation of its Artemis project, which aims to put people back on the lunar surface after a 50-year absence.

Its job will be to propel a test capsule, called Orion, far from Earth.

This spacecraft will loop around the Moon on a big arc before returning home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six weeks.

Orion is uncrewed for this demonstration, but assuming all the hardware works as it should, astronauts will climb aboard for a future series of ever more complex missions, starting in 2024.

"Everything we're doing with this Artemis I flight, we're looking at through the lens of what can we prove out and what can we demonstrate that will buy down risk for the Artemis II crewed mission," explained NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.

Full article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62707359

Opinion

This new deals with a new era of exploration, scientific and technological innovation, and new opportunities for a lot of people. Therefore, I would relate this article to The Human ingenuity and Social organization topics. 

I wanted to write about this because I have always found interesting space-related matters. When I read about the Artemis I and the projects that NASA has, a lot of ideas came to my mind. First, it has been over 50 years since the human race went to the moon for the first time. Back then, only 3 people landed on the moon, but who knows how many will land this time? Furthermore, in 1969, 3 white men landed on the moon but this time NASA is planning to land the first woman and first black person on the moon, showing that exploration is open to everyone. 

This leads to another question: will ordinary people (non-astronauts) be able to go to the moon or even live on it, will it be soon? Moreover, this questioning makes me believe that at one point in my life I could have the opportunity to take steps on the moon.