NASA’s mission to the Moon takes off as Aussie company watches on
The Artemis II mission has sent its crew on a nearly 10-day journey around the moon and back – with an SA-based company helping to track the mission.
Source: NASA
Four astronauts have blasted off from Florida on NASA’s Artemis II mission, a high-stakes 10-day trip around the moon that marks the US’s boldest step yet toward returning humans to the lunar surface this decade before China’s first crewed landing.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule, roared to life just before sunset on Wednesday (local time) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Centre to lift its first crew of three US astronauts and a Canadian astronaut off Earth.
The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen are poised for a nearly 10-day expedition around the moon and back. It will take them deeper into space than humans have gone before.
After nearly three years of training, they are the first group to fly in NASA’s Artemis program, a multibillion-dollar series of missions created in 2017 to build up a long-term US presence on the moon over the next decade and beyond.
And South Australians will play an important role supporting them, according to Defence and Space Industries Minister Chris Picton, with local aerospace company Southern Launch helping to track the mission.
At a press conference in Hindmarsh today, Picton said the company would provide ground-based tracking support enabled by infrastructure at the Koonibba Test Range, near Ceduna.
Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the mission was a “critical step in returning humans to the Moon and establishing a sustained presence beyond low Earth orbit”.
“Our participation reflects the growing role Australia can play in supporting deep space missions and the evolution of ground infrastructure required for cislunar operations.”
The launch was a major milestone more than a decade in the making for the US space agency’s SLS rocket. It also handed its core contractors, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, long-sought validation that the 30-storey-tall system can safely loft humans into space, as NASA increasingly relies on newer, cheaper rockets from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and others.
Stay informed, daily
The Artemis II mission is a key early step in the flagship US moon program, which is targeting its first crewed landing on the lunar surface in 2028 in the Artemis IV mission.
NASA is pressed to achieve that lunar landing – its first since the final Apollo mission in 1972 – as China expands its own lunar program with a planned astronaut landing as soon as 2030.
-with AAP
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
