The Artemis Program will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in just four days. The first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) will take place with Artemis I. The mission will last between 39 and 42 days and will include an uncrewed spaceship that will fly beyond the Moon and back to Earth. This flight is the dress rehearsal for the return to the Moon.
Artemis III will be the first woman and first person of color to set foot on the moon in 25 years. It will be the first time in over 50 years that astronauts will leave Low Earth Orbit. 13 candidate regions in the Moon's South Pole-Aitken Basin have been identified by NASA. The Hls will land in multiple regions.
The Artemis III lunar landing is being planned by NASA.
The landing sites located within each region are around 100 meters away. Because of the large craters that cover the landscape, these regions are located close to the moon's South Pole. Water ice can be found around the south pole. Some of the Moon's most ancient terrain has yet to be explored by humans. The Artemis lunar science lead for NASA is Sarah Noble.
“Several of the proposed sites within the regions are located among some of the oldest parts of the Moon, and together with the permanently shadowed regions, provide the opportunity to learn about the history of the Moon through previously unstudied lunar materials,”
The regions were selected by an agency-wide team of scientists and engineers who assessed the lunar South Pole using data from NASA's LRO and other missions. Based on launch window availability and potential for accommodating a safe landing, each region was evaluated. The regions were considered to be accessible based on the capabilities of the SLS.
Flexibility is ensured by having multiple regions with multiple landing sites. The analysis team weighed other criteria specific to the Artemis III mission, such as landing close to a permanently shadowed region and allowing the crew to conduct extra-vehicular activities. The crew will be able to collect samples and perform scientific analysis in an undisturbed area, yielding important information about water ice's depth, distribution, and composition in the craters.
Mark Kirasich is the associate administrator for the Artemis campaign development division.
“Selecting these regions means we are one giant leap closer to returning humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo. When we do, it will be unlike any mission that’s come before as astronauts venture into dark areas previously unexplored by humans and lay the groundwork for future long-term stays.”
Other lighting conditions had to be considered when selecting sites near shadowed regions. The crew will spend 6.5 days on the surface, and all 13 regions have sites that give continuous sunlight. For a long-term stay on the Moon, operations will rely on solar power and minimize temperature variations for the astronauts and their equipment. Jacob Bleacher is the Chief Exploration scientist for NASA.
Learning how to use resources that are available to us while also preserving their scientific integrity is part of the process of developing a blueprints for exploring the solar system. From a scientific point of view, lunar water ice is valuable because it can be used to make oxygen and hydrogen for life support systems and fuel.
Conferences and workshops will be hosted by NASA to get input from the scientific community and discuss each region's merits. The feedback from these sessions will help inform the selection process. The selection process will include the landing capabilities of the Starship HLS. As NASA learns more about the target launch date, they will be able to narrow down the possibilities.
The long-term goal of the Artemis Program is to establish infrastructure on the Moon so that there will be a sustained program of lunar exploration. When the Deep Space Transport is added, crewed missions will be able to travel to Mars in the coming decade. Once astronauts land on the Moon again in three years, all of this will happen.
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