Moon By 2024: How Nasa's Artemis Program Works
It's been almost 50 years since Humans have left earth’s orbit. The last time we were on the moon was in 1972 when the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17 returned back after 12 days. The future Apollo missions were then cancelled and we never went back. Until recently in 2019 the Trump administration announced plans to go back to the moon by 2024. NASA now ​​plans to place astronauts back on the moon via their Artemis program. But how exactly is it gonna work? What are the various programs involved within the Artemis program? In this video we are gonna talk all about that and more.
After the Apollo missions were cancelled there was a long drought. Humans did go to space but never left its orbit. NASA has been trying to change that since 2004 when President George W. Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, an initiative to send people back to the Moon and eventually land on Mars. Since then, NASA's deep space efforts have had a number of names: Constellation (2004-2010, targeted lunar surface and Mars), Journey to Mars (2015-2018, targeted cislunar space, asteroid and Mars), and Moon to Mars (2018 to present, targeting lunar surface and Mars). NASA's Artemis program was developed under the administration of President Donald Trump and continues under President Joe Biden. The first clear reference to a lunar mandate came in Trump's Space Policy Directive on December 1, 2017, which instructed NASA to focus on lunar missions. Then, in March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence, citing a "space race" with Russia and China, set NASA an ambitious deadline to have humans land near the south pole of the Moon by 2024, at least four years ahead of schedule by the agency at the time.The 2024 closing date become met with a few complaint and issue nearly immediately, with questions bobbing up from inside NASA, Congress and different establishments approximately how the organization might put together new factors — inclusive of a rocket, a space suit and a human landing system — appropriately in time. The NASA administrator at the time, Jim Bridenstine, was adamant safety would be respected. Meanwhile, Congress did not allocate as much money for elements of Artemis as the Trump administration had requested. By August 2021, delays to spacesuit development made a 2024 deadline "not feasible," NASA's inspector general found.
With its current Artemis program, NASA plans to send astronauts to the South Pole by 2024 and ultimately establish a permanent presence on the moon. In the Artemis program, the first woman and the first person of color will land on the moon, along with the first international astronauts to participate on the moon. The infrastructure for the program is huge, from an outpost on a space station to spacesuits, and from takeoff and landing equipment to commercial payloads. The Artemis program is run primarily by NASA and American commercial space companies in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the space agencies of several other nations. Other countries have been invited to join the program by signing the current Artemis Agreement, which is open for signature since October 2020.
The Artemis program is designed to land humans on the moon quickly, by 2024, and then focus on mars as a long-term mission. The Moon will be a good base if we plan to travel and live on mars. Elon musk, the CEO of SpaceX often says that, We should have had a moon base by now!! The moon will be our first experience on living and carrying out experiments on a celestial body outside Earth. The short-term preliminary plan is to use both commercial rockets such as NASA's space launch system, the Orion crew capsule and a lunar landing system. A small space station in lunar orbit called the Gateway would serve for future surface missions. But how will these different systems work and coordinate to make the Artemis vision of landing humans safely back to the moon a reality? Let's take a look at all of them one by one.
SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM- NASA's Space Launch System is NASA's heavy-lift rocket designed to carry people and cargo into the solar system. It was first announced in September 2011 under the administration of President Barack Obama, when NASA was targeting "flexible targets" like Mars and a near-Earth asteroid for future human missions. After overcoming development delays and challenges in late 2020 and early 2021, SLS is scheduled to make its maiden flight, Artemis 1, in December 2021, when it will launch an Orion spacecraft in a loop around the moon. It is a massive rocket based on space shuttle-based technology. It's essentially a larger version of the shuttle stack that swaps the winged orbiter for cargo or for the Orion crew capsule on top. The center stage of the vehicle is a stretched external shuttle fuel tank, which is powered by 4 space shuttle main engines (RS25). (During the Shuttle program these engines were refurbished and reused; for SLS they will be ditched in the ocean.) A pair of solid-fuel rockets from the 5-segment space shuttle are used to support the core phase in the initial phase of flight. SLS will be available in various configurations, with the lunar astronaut launch version expected to be 98m high. It will be developed in three main phases with different capacities, mainly the upper phases: Block 1, Block 1B and Block 2. The core phase of all versions will be built by Boeing, which received an initial contract of $ 2.8 billion to work in 2014.
THE ORION SPACECRAFT- The history of the development of the Orion spacecraft dates back to long before Artemis. NASA contracted Lockheed Martin to build the teardrop-shaped vehicle in 2006 under a contract valued at up to $ 8.15 billion at the time. Orion was originally developed for the Constellation program of the administration of President George W. Bush to get people to the moon and Mars; the program was discontinued in 2010 under Obama. Orion was revived in 2011 with a modified system design, and NASA said the design could be adapted for the newer exploration vision for flexible targets. Later, Orion was retained as the spaceship of choice for Artemis. Orion is a crew vehicle that can support up to 4 astronauts on space travel, similar in concept but with a larger interior space than Apollo capsules. Unlike capsules, which were designed solely for low-Earth orbit transport, Orion's heat shield can withstand the high-speed reentry required when returning from space. The Orion spacecraft consists of three main components: a pressurized crew capsule, a service module, and a launch abort tower that is nominally dropped on the rise. Orion has successfully completed one flight test to date, a high Earth orbit mission called Exploration Flight Test1 (EFT1) on December 5, 2014. Delays in SLS development have postponed an expected second flight for the capsule several times since 2017 on the next expected flight. Artemis 1, by the end of 2021, Orion is expected to fly around the moon with experiments, cubesats and human test items to study the stresses and strains of space travel in future astronauts. Orion is five meters in diameter and can carry four astronauts, NASA says.
THE LUNAR GATEWAY- The Gateway space station is the latest in a long evolution of the space station and basic space concepts for astronauts; One of NASA's earliest mentions of a "gateway to deep space" orbiting the moon was in 2017, and the facility was included in Artemis' early programming plans as a way station for astronauts targeting the lunar surface. In 2020, Gateway was pulled from the "critical path" of the first moon landing in 2024, but it remains one of NASA's planned successors to the International Space Station Program. Gateway, like ISS, will be an international association, but unlike ISS, Gateway will not have permanent staff. Currently, the gateway does not have to be operational for the first moon landing in 2024. NASA is asking commercial companies to provide gateway cargo transportation services, similar to what the International Space Station does. Some of the planned elements of Gateway include a power and propulsion module built by Maxar; a residential and logistics outpost built by Northrop Grumman; the European Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications System, or ESPRIT, built by Thales Alenia; the International Room Module built by Thales Alenia and a robotic arm built by MDA called Canadarm3. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket will deliver the first two segments, NASA announced in early 2021. The Gateway design is still under development and NASA could add more elements.
Shackleton Crater surface base- In 2012, scientists studying the Moon's South Pole Shackleton Crater in unprecedented detail identified abundant supplies of frozen water on the lunar surface of the region. Since then, observations by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and other spacecraft have confirmed that there is water ice in the region. So-called lunar researchers believe that such water can be separated into its hydrogen and oxygen components for rocket fuel or for supplying air to astronauts. However, the technology to convert water into fuel is still in the early stages of development; One of the CubeSats, which will fly around the moon with NASA's SLS, will test a water electrolysis propulsion system in space. In 2020, NASA revealed initial plans for its Artemis base camp near Shackleton Crater. As the facility evolves and grows, supplies of water, garbage disposal, communications, landing vehicles and protection of astronauts from radiation will be needed, NASA said. The base will also include two mobility systems: a lunar all-terrain vehicle for the movement of astronauts on the surface and a habitable mobility platform that could support trips from the base for up to 45 days. The facility can also allow for moon dust-related experiments, in-situ resource utilization or a far-side radio telescope.
ARTEMIS SPACE SUITS- Well Spacesuits are an important aspect that you cannot ignore at all. NASA last used a spacesuit on the lunar surface in 1972; its current generation of spacesuits for floating spacewalks, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, was introduced in 1981 but is not suitable for the conditions on the moon. In search of improved options, NASA unveiled two prototype spacesuits for Artemis in 2019. The first is the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), a red, white and blue suit designed to be worn on expeditions to the lunar surface. . The second is the Orion Crew Survival System, a bright orange pressure suit worn by astronauts in the Orion capsule when they launch into space and return to Earth. Starting in October 2020, NASA planned to produce five xEMU suits in the first batch: one for design review, one for qualification testing, one for International Space Station in-orbit testing, and two for the first landing mission. lunar. Artemis 3. NASA also requested information on possible commercial involvement in the development of spacesuits in April 2021. But in August 2021, the NASA inspector general's office cited a 20-month delay in the development of the xEMU, which caused the 2024 moon deadline for implementing on the moon "not feasible."
Robotic Missions- NASA plans to deploy landers, rovers, payloads, and other privately developed commercial products to the moon as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS was first proposed in April 2018 following the retirement of the Resource Prospector rover, and NASA said it plans to focus on a "series of progressive robotic missions" to the moon. The agency published a draft call for proposals in April 2018, and the first group of US companies was selected in November 2018. As of August 2021, it is unclear which CLPS mission will carry out the first launches scheduled for 2020. The Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission One (PM1) plans to send more than two dozen payloads to the moon in 2022, according to SpaceNews. Intuitive Machines will also deliver NASA's Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME1) in 2022. NASA is asking commercial companies to build lunar landing systems that will eventually dock with the gateway. A visiting Orion team boarded the lander, brought it to the surface, and returned in an ascending module or in the entire vehicle. The first landers could only surface briefly, while future vehicles could accommodate crews during the moonlit night.
NASA’s Artemis program is going to be an important step in the history of mankind and its vision for becoming an interplanetary species. We made this video really easy for you people to understand. SO what do you think are going to be the challenges for the Artemis mission? Let us know what you think in the comment section below. And don't forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel, it encourages us to keep on making high quality content for you!!