The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has published images of the Orion spacecraft, on which a group of astronauts will fly around the moon as part of the Artemis 2 mission, planned for 2025. Later, Orion will also be used to deliver a crew of astronauts to the surface of the Earth’s satellite.
Currently, NASA specialists are completing work on the interior of Orion at the Space Center. Kennedy in Florida. In parallel, the department’s engineers are installing protective hull panels and preparing the ship for vacuum tests, which will take place this spring.
In 2022, as part of the Artemis 1 mission, the Orion spacecraft flew unmanned around the Moon and returned to Earth. The next stage of the program will be the Artemis 2 mission, when four astronauts will fly around the satellite of our planet. If no changes occur, the crew of the Artemis 2 mission will include NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glover as pilot (will be the first black person to go beyond low Earth orbit, LEO) , Christina Koch as the mission specialist (becoming the first woman to go beyond LEO), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen as the second specialist.
The quartet will be the first crew of the Orion spacecraft, which has already gone into space twice, but on both occasions there were no people or life support systems on board. The Artemis 2 mission itself will be the next step towards the implementation of the American lunar program Artemis, one of the goals of which is to land people on the surface of the Moon. The delivery of astronauts to the Moon should take place as part of the Artemis 3 mission, which, according to current estimates, can be carried out no earlier than 2026. The US lunar program also involves the construction of a base at the south pole of the satellite.
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