This is the new spacecraft that will return humans to the moon
Next year, NASA will send astronauts to the moon again.
Spacecraft shape
The European Space Agency, which helped build the Orion spacecraft, which will carry four passengers, published a picture of the spacecraft before it was transported to the testing room and exposed to conditions simulating space conditions.
The European Space Agency wrote: “At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in the United States, the Orion spacecraft that will be used in Artemis 2 (the first mission to return humans to the Moon) is preparing for this first mission to take humans around the Moon and return them to Earth after more than 50 years.” .
The Artemis 2 mission will see astronauts sent there on a high-altitude rocket called SLS, larger than the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
This time, the astronauts will not land on the surface of the Moon, but will orbit around it with the vehicle and then return to Earth safely - we hope. If successful, this flight will pave the way for a similar flight in September 2026 as part of the Artemis 3 mission, but that future flight will see a landing on the moon’s surface and staying on it for about a week.
NASA had prepared to send humans into space as part of the Artemis 2 mission at the end of this year, but for safety reasons, it decided to postpone the flight to September 2025.
“Crew safety is and will continue to be our top priority,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, said in a statement to the agency earlier this year.
Of particular concern is the unexpected damage to Orion's heat shield on the fortunately unmanned Artemis 1 flight. What happened is that as the vehicle descended through the Earth's atmosphere, some small pieces of the shield unexpectedly separated, causing the problem.
According to the space agency, the teams took a straightforward approach to understanding the problem, including taking samples of the heat shield and testing it closely.
Source: websites