Since December 11, 1972, humans have not set foot on the lunar surface again, which gives rise to speculation where many people question the arrival of the same. For this reason, conjectures have been created to discredit the flights made by NASA in its Apollo project, which is why reaching the moon again is NASA’s new mission.
After having obtained water on the moon, in addition to having a long time without sending a man to Space, the government of the United States of America, in 2017 signed agreements to return to the moon for the year 2024, that is why various organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and international partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Australian Space Agency (ASA) formed a project called Artemis.
Why the Name of Artemis?
Artemis is the goddess of hunting, wild animals, the births that represented the moon and also the twin sister of Apollo, name of the old project with which NASA arrived at our natural satellite, the Moon. Because in those first missions the crew was only made up of men, the names assigned were correspondingly masculine. But it was decided that this time a woman would integrate these projects, thus being a new beginning in space exploration, in addition to the fact that she would become the first woman to set foot on the Moon. For all this, it has been chosen to place the project back to the moon the name of Artemis.
An ambitious project
NASA and the US government have an ambitious project since the return to the moon plan was resumed, but it has been affected by problems caused by COVID-19. They also have drawbacks with the designs of the landing module that, until April of last year, due to the change of government in the USA, the corresponding contracts for their manufacture have not been signed. As a consequence of the situation, NASA announced that the contract award processes had been lengthened to offer help in the election and thus be able to choose the best lunar landing module without pressure.
Delays in the Artemis project
Testing of the first Space Launch Systems (SLS) has been delayed as well. On January 16, 2021, a test of the propulsion system was carried out whose scheduled duration was eight minutes but, due to an error that until now is unknown, the computers entered a state of emergency and the propulsion system was turned off in less than 1 minute. NASA spokespersons report that a lot of information could be collected and despite this setback it is expected that the first Artemis mission will be carried out by the end of 2021, which will circle the moon without a crew.
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Image by NASA HQ PHOTO via Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.
