The US Space Agency (NASA) has set November 2024 as the date for the launch of the “Artemis 2” mission, which will transport astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.
The announcement of this date came after the success achieved by the “Artemis 1” mission, which ended in December, and lasted a little more than 25 days, when the unmanned Orion spacecraft launched on a first test flight with the most powerful “SLS” missile in the world, and flew in the vicinity of Moon successfully before returning to Earth, according to AFP, reports reports Al-Rai daily.
NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free said, in a press conference, that the analysis of the details of this mission is continuing, noting that the first results allow the launch of the second “Artemis” mission near “the end of November 2024”, that is, after more than a year and a half.
This year, NASA is supposed to announce the names of the four astronauts who will make up the Artemis 2 crew. It became known that a Canadian would be among them. The “Artemis 2” mission intends to fly around the moon without landing on its surface, as part of a mission that will last about ten days.
The “Artemis” program aims to send the first woman and the first person of color to the moon. Only 12 men, all of them white, stepped on the surface of the moon as part of the Apollo mission in 1972.
NASA aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon through a base on its surface and a space station orbiting around it, in preparation for heading to Mars, perhaps in the late 2030s.