A senior agency official told the BBC that the Artemis missions were likely to have astronauts living on the moon for years to come.
Humans could stay on the moon for long stretches of time this decade, a senior NASA official has told the BBC.
Howard Hu, who leads the agency’s Orion aerospace program, said the habitats will be needed to support science missions.
He said on the BBC program Domingo with Laura Kuenssberg that Wednesday’s (16/11) launch of the Artemis rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft was a “historic day for human spaceflight”.
The Orion capsule is currently about 134,000 kilometers from the Moon.
The Artemis rocket, 100 meters high, took off from the Kennedy Space Center – located in Cape Canaveral, on Merritt Island, in the USA – as part of a NASA mission that intends to bring astronauts back to Earth’s satellite after 50 years.
On top of the rocket is the Orion spacecraft which, in this first mission, is unmanned, but is equipped with a “dummy” that records the impacts of the flight on the human body.
Wednesday’s flight followed two earlier launch attempts in August and September that aborted during the countdown due to technical issues.
Hu said seeing Artemis take off was “an amazing feeling” and “a dream”.
“It’s the first step we’re taking toward long-term deep space exploration, not just for the United States, but for the world,” he said.
“And I think this is a historic day for NASA, but it’s also a historic day for all the people who love human spaceflight and deep space exploration.”
“I mean, we’re going back to the moon, we’re working on a sustainable program, and this is the vehicle that’s going to take the people who are going to get us back to the moon again.”
Hu explained that if the current Artemis flight is successful, the next one will be manned, followed by a third, in which astronauts will land on the Moon again for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
The current mission is going well, he told the BBC, with all systems functioning and the mission team preparing for Orion’s next engine burn (known as a burn) on Monday (11/21), to position the spacecraft in an orbit far from the Moon.
According to Hu, watching the mission from Earth makes him feel like an anxious parent, but he said seeing pictures and video of Orion “really gives that thrill and ‘wow, we’re going back to the moon’ feeling.”
One of the most critical phases of the Artemis I mission will be to return the Orion module safely to Earth. It will re-enter the planet’s atmosphere at 38,000 km/h, or 32 times the speed of sound, and the shield at its base will be subjected to temperatures close to 3,000°C.
Once the safety of Artemis components and systems have been tested and proven, Hu said the plan is to have humans living on the moon “within this decade”.
A large part of the motivation for returning to the Moon is to find out if there is water at the satellite’s south pole, he added, because it can be converted to provide fuel for spacecraft going deeper into space, for example to Mars.
“We send people to the surface [da Lua] and they will live on that surface and do science,” Hu said.
“It’s going to be really important for us to learn a little bit beyond our Earth orbit and then take a big step forward when we go to Mars.”
“And the Artemis missions allow us to have a sustainable platform and transportation system that allows us to learn how to operate in that deep space environment.”
The Orion capsule is due to return to Earth on December 11th.
– This text was published in https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-63691809
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Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
