Artemis 1 is almost home and NASA is already preparing for the next stages.
Artemis 1’s Orion spacecraft is expected to blast off into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday (Dec. 11), and the agency is already looking ahead to future Artemis program missions.
“Artemis 1 and Orion have been phenomenal,” Nujoud Merancy, chief of the Exploration Mission Planning Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told Space.com in a video interview. Orion was tasked with flying around the Moon to collect data for future manned missions, and so the mission has gone so well, with only minor glitches, that NASA felt comfortable adding more tasks to the manifest .
“The whole point [and] The goal of this mission was to validate that we’ve designed the rocket and spacecraft correctly, and it’s exceeding expectations to the point that we were actually adding targets with Orion,” Merancy added.
In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Incredible views of NASA’s moon rocket debut
View of NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft with the moon and Earth in the background (Image credit: NASA)
The main goal of the Artemis 1 mission will be to complete the reentry and high-speed splashdown, which is so far on track for Sunday (December 11). The mission also accomplished other key goals, including testing the unmanned space launch system and flying into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon to assess the readiness for human occupation of the Orion spacecraft.
More analysis will come after the drop to see how Orion did, Merancy said. “All the data recorded during the mission will be reviewed by the engineers and teams to make sure it matches our predictions. This is really the plan going forward.”
When Artemis 2 flies around the Moon with astronauts around 2024, it will be a test of Orion’s life support systems, as they were not included in Artemis 1. The crew has not yet been announced, but the design of the Mission accomplished, said Merancy. .
After that will be the first manned landing on the Moon, expected in 2025 or so with Artemis 3, which will begin a series of excursions to the Moon’s south pole in conjunction with the planned Gateway space station by NASA in orbit.
“There’s a lot to do,” Merancy added of mission planning, but added that the Artemis team will take some time to celebrate Artemis 1’s success during the fall.
“There will be a viewing party here in Johnson on Sunday to see how it goes,” Merancy said. “I’ll bring the family, and we’ll be here to celebrate like everyone else.”
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of Why Am I Taller (over in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).