The countdown “has just been started” ahead of Wednesday’s takeoff of the Artemis 2 mission, which is to transport astronauts around the Moon for the first time in more than half a century, NASA’s launch director announced on Monday.
“Everything tells us that we are currently in an excellent position” to launch in two days, rejoiced Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, announcing that the countdown had therefore been formally launched.
If a postponement could still occur due to the weather or a technical problem – two very frequent setbacks in the space field – the rocket is “ready” as is the crew, assured Amit Kshatriya, deputy administrator of NASA, during a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“53 years ago, humanity left the Moon and never returned. Now we are going back,” he said.
Installed a few hundred meters from the press room, the powerful SLS lunar rocket will transport three Americans (Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover) and a Canadian (Jeremy Hansen) to the Moon, which they will bypass without landing.
98 meters high, a few meters higher than the Statue of Liberty, it is due to take off from Wednesday 6:24 p.m. local time.
In the event of a setback, NASA has several other fallback windows until April 6.
For Wednesday’s firing window, the weather forecast remained favorable on Monday, estimating the chances of having conditions suitable for takeoff at 80%.
NASA also monitors space weather and “more than 500 technical criteria” that must be met to allow a launch, detailed Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. An extremely complex operation but necessary to ensure the safety of the crew, who will be the first transported by this new NASA rocket.
“I’m just going to appeal to the space gods,” Amit Kshatriya joked.
This mission of approximately 10 days should serve to verify that everything is in order to allow the Americans to return to lunar soil in the near future, this time to build a base and prepare future missions to Mars.
Artemis 2 will also be a first in several respects: it will notably be the first lunar flight in which a woman, a person of color and a non-American will take part.
