With NASA’s first launch to the moon in five decades potentially just months away, the space agency has just released the first episode of a new show focusing on the highly anticipated mission.
Moonbound – Setting the Course runs 22 minutes and offers an in-depth look at the preparations for the 10-day Artemis II flight, which will see four astronauts fly around the moon and back.
NASA is using the mission as the first manned test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, paving the way for the Artemis III manned moon landing, which could take place as early as 2027.
During the successful Artemis I mission in 2022, the space agency flew both the rocket and the spacecraft for the first time.
“When you put the crew on a rocket, it’s no longer a test flight,” John Honeycutt, the chairman of the mission management team, says in the video. “This one has to perform as well or better than the first one, and it will… there’s no doubt about that.”
Starting at 12:10 p.m., the video describes in detail the exact course the Artemis II mission is expected to take, including the launch from Kennedy Space Center, the moon flyby, and the splash of water in the ocean.
After several days in an elliptical Earth orbit, with the Orion capsule checking performance under manual control, the crew will head toward the Moon, coming within just 3,300 miles of the lunar surface as they fly around our nearest neighbor.
“We’re going to turn the spacecraft so that you have the best view of the moon in 50 years,” said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II’s senior flight director. “We want to make sure that we get the videos of the moon that we all want to see here on Earth, and that all of our systems work on the other side of the moon too.”
The mission ends with the all-important water disaster following a high-speed entry into Earth’s atmosphere. This could be the most important part of the mission, as the Artemis I mission uncovered some problems with Orion’s heat shield that NASA has been working to resolve.
Looking to the future, NASA aims to use the Artemis program to establish a base on the Moon for extended human missions and to apply lessons learned from the lunar missions in planning the first manned flight to Mars.
Moonbound – Setting the Course can be viewed for free on NASA’s website.
