On video: NASA's announcement about the delay in the launch of the Artemis 1 mission (from NASA's Twitter)
Humans will be able to live on the moon for an extended period as early as this decade, a NASA official told the BBC.
Howard Yu, who leads the agency's Orion spacecraft program, said that in order to carry out scientific missions on the surface of the moon, it will be necessary to build habitats. According to him , Wednesday's launch of the Artemis rocket carrying Orion was “a historic day for human spaceflight.” Orion is currently 134,000 km from the moon.
It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center as part of NASA's mission to return astronauts to the Moon.
Yes, the launch of Artemis 1 (Photo: GettyImages)
According to Hu, the launch of Artemis is "the first step on the way to long-term space exploration, not only for the United States but also for the world."
He added that "this is a historic day for NASA, but also for all the people who love deep space exploration.
We're going back to the moon, we're formulating a viable plan and this vehicle will carry people to land us on the moon again."
Ho explained that if the current Artemis flight is successful, the next flight will have a crew, and the third will have astronauts landing on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, 50 years ago. Year in December 1972.
After the Artemis systems are proven to be safe, Hu believes that in the current decade "humans will live on the moon."
A significant part of the desire to return to the moon is to find out if there is water at its south pole, because then it will be possible to turn the water into fuel for a spacecraft that will be launched into deep space, for example to Mars.
"We are going to send people to the surface of the moon, and they will live there and do science," Hu said.
"The missions of Artemis allow us to have a sustainable platform and a transportation system that will allow us to learn about deep space."
The Orion capsule is expected to return to Earth on December 11.
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