Artemis Program
Artemis is NASA’s new lunar exploration program, which includes sending the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. Why named by Artemis, is Artemis was Apollo’s twin sister and the goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology. When they land, Artemis astronauts will stand where no human has ever stood: the Moon’s South Pole. The latest program was called after Apollo and met the challenge of being the first man to land on the Moon in 1969, and it is slightly related to Artemis.
The Space Launch System is NASA’s newest rocket (SLS). It is the world’s most powerful rocket to date. The Orion spacecraft, which can carry up to four humans, will be launched into lunar orbit by the SLS. Then astronauts will connect Orion with the Gateway, a tiny spacecraft. Astronauts will train here in preparation for expeditions to the Moon and beyond. In a new human landing system, the crew will go from the Gateway to the lunar surface and then return to the Gateway. The crew will return to Earth on Orion once their work is completed.
The Artemis I SLS rocket will launch an uncrewed Orion into Earth orbit, placing it on a path toward a lunar distant retrograde orbit, where it will travel 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, or a total of about 280,000 miles from Earth before returning home. This crucial flight test will demonstrate the performance of the SLS rocket on its maiden flight and gather engineering data throughout before Orion returns on a high-speed Earth reentry at Mach 32, or 24,500 miles per hour. The high speed lunar velocity reentry is the top mission priority and a necessary test of the heat shield’s performance as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, heating to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — about half as hot as the surface of the sun — before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean for retrieval and post-flight engineering assessment.
With Artemis II, the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion will send four astronauts to the lunar environment for the first time in more than 50 years. This will be the Artemis Generation’s “Apollo 8 moment,” when the astronauts aboard Orion will capture the full globe of the Earth from afar, as a backdrop to the Moon. With confidence based on the Artemis I mission and the thousands of hours put into prior flight and ground testing, the Artemis II crew will board Orion atop the SLS for an approximate 10-day mission where they will set a record for the farthest human travel beyond the far side of the Moon in a hybrid free return trajectory.
The Artemis II crew will travel 4,600 miles (7,400 km) beyond the far side of the Moon. From this vantage point, they will be able to see the Earth and the Moon from Orion’s windows, with the Moon close in the foreground and the Earth about a quarter-million miles in the background.
Artemis III will be the culmination of the rigorous testing and more than two million miles accumulated in space on NASA’s deep space transportation systems during Artemis I and II. Orion and its crew of four will once again travel to the Moon — this time to make history with the first woman and next man to walk on its surface. A rapid return to the Moon requires the agency to minimize the number of systems involved with landing humans on the surface by 2024, so while future lunar landings will use the Gateway as a staging point in lunar orbit for missions to the surface, the agency’s procurement for a commercially provided HLS left the door open for proposals that didn’t use Gateway on early Artemis missions.
At the lunar South Pole, NASA and its partners will develop an Artemis Base Camp to support longer expeditions on the lunar surface. Planned Base Camp elements include a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV, or unpressurized rover), a habitable mobility platform (pressurized rover), a lunar foundation habitation module, power systems, ad in-situ resource utilization systems.
At the moon we will :
- Find and use water and other critical resources needed for long-term exploration
- Investigate the Moon’s mysteries and learn more about our home planet and the universe Learn how to live and operate on the surface of another celestial body where astronauts are just three days from home Prove the technologies we need before sending astronauts on missions to Mars, which can take up to three years roundtrip (Source NASA)
The Moon plan is twofold: it’s focused on achieving the goal of an initial human landing by 2024 with acceptable technical risks, while simultaneously working toward sustainable lunar exploration in the mid- to late 2020s.
After Artemis III, NASA and its partners will embark on missions on and around the Moon that also will help prepare us for the types of mission durations and operations that we will experience on human missions to Mars. In this drive toward a more robust human lunar enterprise, NASA, U.S. industry, and our global partners will establish the infrastructure, systems, and robotic missions that can enable a sustained lunar surface presence
The Moon is a good place to learn new science. When astronauts study new places on the lunar surface, NASA will learn more about the Moon, Earth and even the Sun. The Moon is a “test bed” for Mars. A test bed is a place to prove that a technology or idea will work. The Moon is a place to demonstrate that astronauts will one day be able to work away from Earth on Mars for long periods of time. Artemis missions enable a growing lunar economy by fueling new industries, supporting job growth, and furthering the demand for a skilled workforce.
