The era of Artemis well and truly began Thursday, when the sleek spacecraft splashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California after traveling 700,000 miles around the moon carrying four astronauts.
For NASA, its international partners and all of humanity, the successful completion of the Artemis II mission marked the return of our species to deep space after more than half a century.
It was a magnificent achievement and NASA deserves credit for making something so difficult look relatively easy. But it also raises an important question: What happens next?
NASA recently revised the mission plans for Artemis III and IV to ensure a rocky mission before human landings on the Moon. More and more work needs to be done to make these flights possible. Honestly, the Artemis II mission that ended on Friday was the lowest hanging fruit of the Artemis Program.
“The work ahead is greater than the work behind us,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said after the landing Friday night.
What follows involves more complex operations, requiring multiple vehicles and eventually landing on another planetary body. To achieve their goals, NASA will have to remove the training wheels. So here is the state of the basic elements that must come together to land men on the moon.
Space launch system
Many NASA officials praised the performance of the Space Launch System rocket during the April 1 launch of the Artemis II rocket, saying it hit the target orbit for the mission with more than 99 percent accuracy.
The main stage of the Artemis III mission is expected to leave the factory in Michoud, Louisiana later this month for delivery to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Other missile elements have already arrived or will arrive soon.
Meanwhile, the Mobile Launch Tower was moderately damaged and will soon be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida, where it will be assembled for the next mission.
