![]() ![]() The Falcon 9 carrying astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the ISS as part of the Demo-2 mission. By May 31st, after nineteen hours in space, the two astronauts rendezvoused with the ISS’ Harmony Module and joined the crew of Expedition 63 on board. Shortly after reaching orbit, astronauts Robert and Douglas named their spacecraft Endeavour in honor of the first Space Shuttle each had flown aboard. ![]() The Demo-2 flight launched from Space Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 30th. After splashing down off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, the Endeavour was recovered by the SpaceX recovery ship “Go Navigator” and Behnken and Hurley were assisted onto the deck. ![]() Last, but not least, it was the first time a commercially-built vehicle transported astronauts to space and returned them safely. It was also the first time in over forty-five years that American astronauts returned to Earth by splashing down at sea. For the first time in almost ten years, astronauts bound for the ISS had been launched from American soil – effectively restoring domestic launch capability to the US. This brought their historic mission ( Demo-2) to a close and marked the beginning of a new era in space exploration. Sunday, August 2nd, astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley splashed down with their Crew Dragon spacecraft ( Endeavour) in the Gulf of Mexico. We’re one step closer to returning astronauts to the moon. I applaud the team for their work on completing a successful Artemis I mission. Instead, Artemis II astronauts will be transported far around the Moon and then returned home. This one will have humans on board, but they will not land on the Moon – that honor belongs to Artemis III. The second mission of the program, Artemis II, is for now scheduled to take place in the spring of 2024. Separately, the ship’s capsule and heat shield will be turned inside out over the next few months, in search of potential issues that might affect future crewed missions. The spacecraft will be unloaded of its cargo in the coming days and humans will have a look at each of the items Orion transported around the Moon. While for the rest of us the Artemis I mission is pretty much over, NASA engineers are just beginning their work. The ship traveled a total of more than 1.4 million miles (2.25 million km) during its entire flight, as per NASA. Actually, not just around the Moon, as Orion is now officially the record holder for traveling “farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans and return them to Earth” - 270,000 miles (435,000 km) away from our home world. At least, that’s the impression we get from the info we have available, as NASA engineers have a lot of work ahead of them crunching all the numbers behind the effort.Īrtemis I took off on November 16, with the Orion spaceship sent on a 25+ day mission around the Moon by the Space Launch System rocket. The Artemis I mission, slow to get off the ground, managed to achieve all of its goals of proving the technology intended to safely carry humans to the Moon and back works. And by a coincidence of cosmic proportions, it did so almost 50 years to the day after the Apollo 17 Moon landing, the last mission to take humans to the Moon as part of the Apollo program. ![]()
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