The countdown has begun! Tomorrow is the first April launch date for the Artemis II flight. (If the weather or tech doesn’t cooperate, the mission will be pushed forward, so the next couple of days could be interesting!)
NASA’s Artemis II Launch Mission Countdown Begins – NASA
The countdown for NASA’s Artemis II test flight is underway at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with members of the launch team arriving at their consoles inside the Rocco Petrone Launch Control Center. The onsite countdown clock started ticking down at 4:44 p.m. EDT to a targeted launch time of 6:24 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1.
Who will be in that shiny new rocket, you ask?
Meet the first Artemis crew flying to the moon since the Apollo era
The Americans who blazed the trail to the moon more than half a century ago were white men chosen for their military test pilot experience. This first Artemis crew includes a woman, a person of color and a Canadian, products of a more diversified astronaut corps.
Speaking of the comparison to Apollo, what else is different, how are they similar, is that an excellent graphic showing time and trajectory (yes!) and more:
Apollo vs. Artemis: What to know about NASA’s moon missions | AP News
Let’s revisit: Why are we doing this again?
Artemis II: Why is Nasa sending people back to the Moon?
There’s still prestige in being the first to plant your flag in the lunar dust. But now it really matters where you plant it.
(In short: resources, scientific and technological discovery, and did we mention resources?)
We can all follow NASA’s feed, but there’s another option for tracking the flight:
When Artemis II launches to the Moon, we’ll be able to track it on our smartphones. Here’s how
NASA has announced that Artemis II’s journey around the Moon will be available to track online and via a downloadable app called Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW).
And here’s what it will be like inside Firing Room 1 a.k.a. Mission Control:
The NASA mission control masterminds who will keep the Artemis II astronauts safe
…who has the Artemis II astronauts’ backs as they make the 10-day, roughly 685,000-mile journey around the moon, aboard a rocket and spacecraft that haven’t carried humans before? And what does it take to work in the high-stakes, behind-the-scenes roles that keep astronauts safe and the mission on track?
Because astronauts are just the most visible part of what it takes to get a project like this off the ground. Here’s to the engineers, adventurers, and dreamers too!
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