Finally, Artemis goes to the moon.

Fifth time charm. After four failed attempts and several run windows not counted as attempts, the program Artemis finally managed to send ship Orion to the moon, thanks to the momentum ssl rocket. It happened this Wednesday, November 16 at 7:45. Launch delayed by almost 45 minutes due to a problem filling the fuel tanks.

Launch window opened in 06:04 UTC (07:04 Spanish Peninsular Time and 00:04 Mexico). From now on, Scientists of Artemis they have to work to get a run by following Tropical Storm Nicole, which has already forced the postponement of last Monday’s maneuvers. If they couldn’t do it, they would have to wait until Saturday November 19but, fortunately, this time it was not necessary.

Now it remains only to follow the progress of this mission, which is the first step in a series of launches, with the help of which it is planned to finally return to send people to the moon.

Almost smooth on takeoff Artemis

In previous launch attempts scheduled for August and September, NASA encountered some technical problemswhat made me insert stand next to Mission. At first it was a temperature sensor, which made the engineers think that one of the engines had not cooled down properly. Then there were problems in the fuel tank. It is imperative that there is not the slightest breakage, so the decision was made to return the Orion to the assembly center for a thorough check.

Once ready, both the ship and the SLS missile were considered ready. ready to launch. However, they are already fully immersed in hurricane seasonso weather conditions led to the postponement several more times.

This time Florida was under Hurricane Risk Level HURCON 3. However, since the rocket Ready to withstand wind gusts up to 136 km/h.it was not taken into account that there was a risk, as it was last Monday.

Cooling of the engines went smoothly, with no remarkable mishaps, and measurements of the entire set of sensors on engine 3 showed that it was cooling normally. Everything is going smoothly – except for the delay in filling the fuel tanks, for the first time in the first phase of Artemis. finally made it to the destination.

Now what?

ahead 42 days in which the Orion ship will reach the Moon, spend 6 days in its orbit and return to Earth again.

Thus, he will be ready for the second mission, which will take place in 2024 and it will be exactly the same as this one, with the only difference that Yes, this will include the crew. This time there were no people on the crew, but there were three astronauts who will be in charge of measuring the level of radiation in the vicinity of the Moon. In addition, there are about 10,000 items on board, from a pebble from the Dead Sea to astronaut Snoopy. They even carry a fragment of Apollo 11 itself!

When the mission returns to Earth, some of these items will be given to the people who made the mission possible. In addition, there are several badges that will be awarded to the winners of the Girl Scout Essay Contest.