Artemis II Mission is About to Fly Humans to the Moon — Here's the Science They'll Do
Freeman informs us of:
Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon - here's the science they'll do
If all goes to plan, as soon as tomorrow [Ed. note: today Wednesday], NASA will launch four people on a journey around the Moon. The mission, known as Artemis II, would be the first time humans have left Earth's protective environment and travelled into deep space since the US Apollo programme, which ended more than half a century ago. And it could carry its astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have ever travelled.
Artemis II is one in a series of missions that ultimately aim to build humanity's first permanent base on the Moon. This mission is supposed to test the rocket, crew capsule and other space-flight hardware that NASA wants to use to land humans on the lunar surface in the coming years. During their nearly ten-day journey to the Moon and back, astronauts plan to run experiments that will set the stage for future explorers.
"What we're trying to do is not pick up where Apollo left off, but to use our decades of experience and knowledge and planning to do this sustainable presence on the Moon - and then to do science alongside of that," says Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
[...] Some of the key experiments that will be conducted during the Artemis II mission will explore how deep-space travel affects human health. Other research will rely on the astronauts' ability to see geological features on parts of the Moon that have never been viewed by human eyes.
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