'What else is out there and how can we be better?' - Artemis program makes history

Record ID: 1687127

  • Title: 'What else is out there and how can we be better?' - Artemis program makes history
  • Date: 2nd September 2022
  • Summary: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 2, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) NASA ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR AND FORMER ASTRONAUT, ROBERT CABANA, SAYING: "Man, if I were only born a little sooner, maybe I could have gone to the moon. Man, if I were born a little later, I could have gone to Mars. But the truth is, you were born at the right time for you. And I look back on all that I've gotten to do in my career and where I was when key things happened, and the role that I was able to play in them, and it turned out OK." (SOUNDBITE) (English) NASA ASTRONAUT AND U.S. ARMY LIEUTENANT COLONEL, ANNE MCCLAIN, SAYING: "It's very unifying to be part of a program that unites humans on something not because of fear, not because of war or hatred or assumptions, but because of the common drive to explore, to ask, what else is out there and how can we be better? And to be part of something like that is a legacy."
  • Embargoed: 16th September 2022 21:23
  • Keywords: Artemis NASA astronaut moon
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Science,Space Exploration,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA00D243102092022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Ground teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (September 2) began a final full day of launch preparations on the eve of a second attempt to send NASA's giant, next-generation moon rocket on its debut test flight, five days after technical problems foiled an initial try.
    Mission managers were still "go" for a Saturday (September 3) afternoon liftoff of the 32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion space capsule to kick off NASA's moon-to-Mars Artemis program, successor to the Apollo lunar missions a half-century ago, NASA officials said.
    The mission, dubbed Artemis I, marks the first voyage for both the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively.
    The SLS is set to launch Orion around the moon and back on a 37-day, un-crewed test flight designed to put both vehicles through their paces before flying astronauts in a subsequent mission targeted for 2024.
    "Before we put a crew on them, we want to make sure they work," said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Cabana, a former astronaut who commanded NASA’s Endeavour, the first International Space Station assembly mission in 1998. "One of the things we want to do is we want to make sure that the Orion spacecraft can support a crew of four for 21 days. So originally we were looking at a 42-day mission. With this new launch day, we're looking at 39 days, which is well beyond the 21-day designed operation for the Orion spacecraft. So that's going to be a stress on the system."
    If the first two Artemis missions succeed, NASA is aiming to land astronauts back on the moon, including the first woman to set foot on the lunar surface, as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame is likely to slip by a few years.
    Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface.
    "The difference between Artemis and Apollo is that Apollo went to the moon and those were two or three day missions on the lunar surface," said Cabana. "We want to go back in a sustainable way. We want to plan to live on the moon, to utilize its resources and learn what we need to know to eventually go on to Mars."
    Apollo grew out of the U.S.-Soviet space race of the Cold War era, while NASA's renewed lunar focus is driven more by science and encompasses international partnerships with the space agencies of Europe, Japan and Canada, and with commercial rocket ventures such as SpaceX.
    Unlike Apollo, the latest flights to the moon are aimed at establishing a long-term, sustainable base of operations on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit as a stepping stone for eventual human expeditions to Mars.
    NASA's first step is getting off the ground with the SLS, the biggest new vertical launch system the U.S. space agency has built since the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo era.
    "It's very unifying to be part of a program that unites humans on something not because of fear, not because of war or hatred or assumptions, but because of the common drive to explore, to ask, what else is out there and how can we be better? And to be part of something like that is a legacy," said Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut part of the Artemis 1 team and a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel.
    The SLS and Orion have been under development for more than a decade, with years of delays and ballooning costs that have run to at least $37 billion as of last year.
    But the Artemis program also has generated tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in commerce for the aerospace industry, according to NASA.
    (Production: Maria Alejandra Cardona, Roselle Chen)
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