NASA’s flagship Artemis I mission has flown past the moon

There is a person by the name ofLeah Crane.

Artemis I flew within 130 kilometres of the far side of the moon on November 21st.

On November 16th, the most powerful rocket ever launched, the SLS, was blasted off with the capsule. After years of delays and several missed launch opportunities this year, the lift-off went amazingly smoothly, despite the fact that SLS weathered a Hurricane in Florida.

Laura Forczyk is a space analyst. There were small hitch, but it didn't explode! It is extremely rare to see anyone working on rocket hardware so close to lift-off, and the biggest of those hitch was a set of loose bolts that a team was sent out to tighten.

The moon is expected to be entered around the 25th ofNovember. It has to come back after six days in space, just as important as the launch itself. It's expected to come back to Earth on 11 December.

NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen told New Scientist that getting off the Earth will be more difficult than returning to the moon. The mission is only over once it is safe to do so. The goal of the Artemis II mission is to put humans on board, but only if it is safe to do so.

NASA will have to be more cautious. Emily Judd is a researcher at NASA's Langley Research Center. Everything is ready for the crew when they go up on Artemis II, and part of that is testing out the life support systems.

The main purpose of Artemis I is to test the SLS and Orion spacecraft ahead of Artemis II, which will see a crewed Orion perform a lunar flyby. The small satellites were released into space hours after the launch.

A Japanese experiment called Omotenashi is intended to perform a soft landing on the moon. This would make Japan the fourth nation to do so. It is possible that Omotenashi will not be able to land because it is tumbling in space.

Three of the cubesats are being used for research. Another, called NEA Scout, will fly via solar sail to a nearby asteroid. Five of the 10 cubesats are currently functioning as expected, while the other five are experiencing either technical issues or are unable to communicate with their operators on Earth, according to a NASA press conference on 18 November.

The Artemis III mission is intended to take astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 in order to inform future scientific study. We have barely touched the surface of what we can learn about the moon and how we can survive on Mars. The moon is the starting point for the solar system.

It's free to sign up for our newsletter every Friday.