Laura Dautriche
Head to the Moon! With its Artemis 1 mission, NASA sets out to conquer it. The Orion capsule that left on November 16 will return to Earth on Sunday. His goal was to check that all the technological equipment was working before sending men in three or four years from now. But why go back there 50 years following the end of the Apollo missions?
NASA is back to conquer the Moon! The mission Artemis 1 ends on Sunday with the return to Earth of the capsule Orion, left on November 16 to circumnavigate the Moon. The objective was to test all the technological equipment before returning men there within three or four years. Why return to the Moon 50 years following the end of the Apollo missions ? Response elements.
Two goals
The first objective is political: China has the ambition to explore the Moon, the Indians are interested in it, the Americans want to remain leader and therefore occupy the land. The other big goal, explains former astronaut Jean-François Clervoy, is to use the Moon as a test bed before sending humans to Mars, the journey of which will take at least nine months. “The Moon is nearby, we can bring astronauts back immediately in case of emergency,” he says.
“It’s to learn how to do what we will have to do one day when we go to Mars. Living in an environment of regolith and very abrasive dust. Maintaining, repairing, maintaining a habitat on another celestial body and in orbit from another celestial body… on the Moon, we will be subjected to the same radiation as on Mars”, he explains at the microphone of Europe 1.
In 2024, astronauts will orbit the Moon, we will probably walk on the Moon once more in 2025, and the Frenchman Thomas Pesquet is one of the serious candidates to go there.