Four astronauts are continuing with their intense training for the Artemis II mission that will fly them around the moon and back in a 10-day voyage.
NASA’s huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will power the crew toward the moon aboard an Orion spacecraft in a flight system that was tested in the crewless Artemis I mission in 2022.
The interior of the Orion is “about the size of a camper van,” according to Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who’ll be flying alongside three NASA colleagues in next year’s flight.
Hansen made the comment in a YouTube video in which he offered a closer look at the inside of a mock-up of the Orion spacecraft that’s used for training and testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
“This gets a lot of use by our team, who are always bringing prototypes in here, fit-checking things, practicing procedures,” Hansen said.
The astronaut, who will be on his first mission to space as well as becoming the first Canadian to fly to the moon, said a lot of people ask him about the size of the capsule’s interior, considering it’ll be home to four people for more than a week.
“Yeah, it’s a tiny space,” Hansen admits. “It’s about the size of a camper van. However, when you get rid of these foot restraints [for launch], there is quite a bit of free volume in here.”
Hansen adds: “Even as someone who’s quite tall, over six feet, I can easily stretch out flat in either direction.”
The astronaut said that compared to the mock-up, the Orion they’re flying in will have additional equipment taking up space.
“We start unstowing things, setting up cameras, computer equipment that we use for the mission” Hansen explained, adding that the bulky spacesuits for launch and landing will also have to be stored during the trip.
The Artemis II mission is currently set to launch from the Kennedy Space Center no later than April 2026, though could lift off as early as February.
The much-anticipated mission will mark the first time for humans to head toward the moon since the final Apollo mission in 1972, and will come ahead of the Artemis III mission that will endeavor to return humans to the lunar surface.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.