This is the ship in which four NASA astronauts will orbit the Moon: "The goal is still to land on the moon in December 2025"

HEALTH / By Carmen Gomaro

There are no vacations for NASA astronauts who are going to the Moon. The four crew members selected last April to orbit the Moon in November 2024 saw the Orion spacecraft for the first time on Tuesday in which they will travel during the Artemis 2 mission, and later appeared at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida together to those responsible for the US space agency to explain how their training is going and the preparations for the first manned trip to the Moon in more than half a century.

“It's been a great day,” said Reid Wiseman, the commander of this mission, which also includes pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen, the latter from the Canadian Space Agency.. “We have been busy since April,” summarized Wiseman, who highlighted how impressed he is by the team's work: “I would like all Americans, Canadians, Europeans and all who support us to see the quality of the people who part of this program, how hard they work and how motivated and excited they are.”

“The fact that the crew has already seen their spacecraft is another important step in getting back to the moon.. Remember that we are going back to the Moon but it is a different moon, we are going to the South Pole, and we are going to see several spacecraft, some from other countries that are going to land in the future, and some this year,” said the NASA director. , Bill Nelson.

Without going any further, next Friday Russia plans to launch the Luna-25 robotic ship towards the South Pole, the first command in half a century: “I don't think many people at this time would say that Russia is ready for its cosmonauts to land on the moon.” the term we are talking about. I think the space race is really going on between the US and China and we have to protect the rights of the international community,” Nelson said..

The head of the agency has recalled that having water on the lunar surface will potentially mean having hydrogen and oxygen. “And so we go back to the Moon, to learn and live in the space environment for long periods of time, so we can go to Mars and back safely.”.

As he declared during a recent interview with EL MUNDO, the head of NASA has stated that the US objective is to make sure that the water [from the Moon] is available to everyone: “Seeing the actions of the Chinese government on Earth , claiming the Spratly Islands as our own, we want to ensure that the ideals of the peaceful and cooperative use of space contained in the Artemis Accords, which have already been signed by 28 countries, will be respected. Naturally, I don't want China to reach the South Pole with humans first, say it's theirs, and leave the rest of us out.”

Now, Nelson added, NASA returns “in a different way, with commercial partners and with international partners.. Bill Nelson, director of NASA: “I think we will reach Mars in 2040, there are only 17 years left”

  • Writing: TERESA GUERRERO Madrid
  • Writing: ALBERTO DI LOLLI (PHOTOGRAPHY)

Bill Nelson, director of NASA: “I think we will reach Mars in 2040, there are only 17 years left”

Space. This is the spacesuit that the first woman and the next man to walk on the Moon will wear

  • Writing: TERESA GUERRERO Madrid

This is the spacesuit that the first woman and the next man to walk on the Moon will wear

Regarding the technical development of the Orion spacecraft, Jim Free, associate director of NASA, explained that the main challenge continues to be solving the problems detected during the Artemis 1 test flight in the vehicle's new solar shield, which is the one that will protect the crew from the high temperatures that the capsule will have to withstand during re-entry into the atmosphere. “We have some ideas about what could cause the problems in the shield that protects the ship when it returns to Earth,” said Free, who has been confident that they will solve it in time.. In Artemisa 2, he stressed, security is going to be the top priority: “We are going to try to know as much as possible about the risks during this mission in order to minimize them.”

In the air is the question of whether Artemis 3, the mission that will take at least two astronauts to the lunar surface, can be carried out by the end of 2025, as planned. And it is that the explosion last April, of one of the key components, the SpaceX Starship, during its first complete test, has been a headache to maintain this calendar: “For now we are working with the objective of landing on the moon in December 2025,” Free said.

The astronauts have also been asked what they do to disconnect after hard training.

Christina Koch, for her part, added that they also take the opportunity to get to know each other as well as possible. “Last night, for example, we went to dinner together at a restaurant. We already feel like a family.”