NASA is preparing to return astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, fifty after the last Apollo mission in 1972. With the first step, Artemis 1, which is due to take off on August 29 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
A first flight without astronauts on board to test the new giant SLS rocket (98 m high) in development for more than a decade and which will become, when it takes off, the most powerful in the world.
At its top, it will carry the Orion capsule, a new spacecraft intended to transport the crews of the next Artemis missions which will have to fly in orbit around the Moon before returning to Earth.
Equipped with a heat shield, it will have to withstand a speed of nearly 40,000 km/h and extreme temperatures on its return to the Earth's atmosphere.
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Artemis 1 will therefore be a major dress rehearsal before sending real astronauts to the Moon from 2024. This time, the SLS rocket will carry astronauts on board to test the Orion spacecraft in orbit around the Moon in real conditions, but without land there.
This honor will be reserved for the crew of Artemis 3 in 2025.
"To all of us looking up at the moon, dreaming of the day humanity returns to the lunar surface, folks, here we are, here we go again," NASA chief Bill Nelson said during of a press conference.
But the Artemis program intends to go much further than the Moon: the objective is above all to make our natural satellite a rear base where the technologies necessary to send humans to Mars will be developed, in the longer term.