The European Space Agency presents what life will look like in the villages that humanity will establish on the surface of the moon (ESA)
Humans will be able to live on the moon by the end of the next decade, a senior NASA official is convinced after the successful completion of the Artemis 1 mission, an unmanned test flight of the Orion spacecraft that circled the moon.
The purpose of the mission was to collect a wealth of data for NASA engineers, as well as to prove that the SLS launcher and the Orion spacecraft are working properly before astronauts can man them. Also, the Artemis 1 mission performed the first biological experiment in deep space. The mission is only the first in a long series of complex missions , which were intended to prepare the ground for the establishment of a permanent station on the moon.
Although the spacecraft was designed to carry humans, this time it was unmanned at all and only dolls were placed inside it, which collected data for the future crews expected to use the spacecraft. One of the dolls is an Israeli doll named "Zohar" ". She wore the radiation vest developed by the Israeli company "Stemrad", according to which it will be possible to test whether it is effective against radiation.
Orion program manager Howard Ho said the mission was "a historic day for human spaceflight."
He told BBC Sunday that: "This is the first step we are taking in a long exploration of deep space, it is not only for the United States, but for the whole world. We are going back to the moon, and this is the spacecraft that will take the people who will land on the moon again."
The Israeli Space Agency explains that the purpose of the program is to land humans on the moon, establish a human colony on it and turn it into a transit station for manned missions to deep space in general and Mars in particular.
In 2024, the first manned flight of the Artemis program will be launched, from the SLS launcher, aboard the Orion spacecraft, and four flesh-and-blood astronauts will be sent on a journey around the moon.
Whereas in 2025 (a year after the original target set by the Trump administration) the time will come for the Artemis 3 mission - the mission that will return humanity to the surface of the moon.
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A year later, Artemis 4 will be launched, and it too will land two astronauts on the moon - but it will also be the first manned flight of the Block 2 SLS launchers, which will be even more powerful than their predecessors.
This launcher will carry both Orion and the first habitable module of the Lunar Gateway, the lunar space station, into lunar orbit.
The Lunar Gateway will become an international station for NASA and its partners - the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. The lunar space station is intended to eventually replace the International Space Station that currently orbits the Earth (and will be replaced by commercial space stations), and serve as a platform for lunar exploration.
Astronauts from the countries that are members of the program will one day be able to live and work in the Lunar Gateway, descend from it for increasingly frequent research missions on the surface of the Moon, and later also depart from it for the first manned missions to Mars.
The moon will actually serve as a laboratory for a long stay in deep space, where the effects on the human body will be tested and the technologies required to survive the long journey to the Red Planet will be developed.
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The Artemis spacecraft has landed back on Earth (NASA)
Every year another Artemis mission will be launched, and each one will add a new module to the lunar space station.
At the same time, the astronauts on the surface will begin building the infrastructure for the lunar base - humanity's first research station on another world.
Astronauts of the American, European, Canadian, Japanese, and possibly Israeli space agencies will live on and around the moon for longer and longer periods and will learn to utilize the local resources such as water, oxygen and fuel.
According to the NASA senior: "Our goal is that already in this decade people will be able to live on the moon for a long period of time.
They will have houses and vehicles there.
The next step is Mars, a big step forward, a two-year journey, we will have to learn well from this."
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