SpaceX landing on the moon in 2023
After the successful landing of the Orion spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean, NASA Administrator and former US Senator Mr. Bill Nelson announced during a press conference that NASA plans to go to Mars by the end of 2030 and in addition SpaceX landing on the moon in 2023 will also take place. In this conference, he also shared details about SpaceX's Starship moon probe. The event was also attended by several NASA officials, including Michael Sarafin, NASA's Artemis 1 mission manager, who shared his latest thoughts on the performance of the Orion spacecraft during its descent to Earth (and at breakneck speed). .
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During its trip to the moon and back, the Orion spacecraft performed better than NASA engineers had originally expected. The spacecraft's power generation, which is done through solar panels, produced more energy than expected and was extremely efficient. As part of the mission's operations, NASA conducted additional test objectives to push the spacecraft to its limits in order to add more information about its performance for future missions. The next mission of Artemis will include the transfer of the crew, and NASA will use the data from this mission for the next mission, but also changes will be made to the spacecraft.
These modifications include the hand controllers, life support system and displays (all of which enable the crew to monitor and control the spacecraft). However, the next spacecraft will reuse several parts of the spacecraft that landed today. These include antennas, control units and GPS receivers.
After today's successful landing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson revealed that his agency is planning Mars missions by the end of the 2030s.
In fact, the goal of going to Mars was first announced to our organization by Obama. And at the time it was thought that we would get there around 2033. But this discussion was for at least 12 years ago. And now, a goal more realistic and faster than we imagined will be achieved by the end of the 2030s. A lot of this depends on new technologies, the ability to sustain humans for long periods of time all the way. Part of that is how quickly we can get to Mars with a crew. And so, we ended up with the Office of Management and Budget on nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion research. I think Congress will support it. New technologies that will get us there faster, and that's why we set a goal of going to Mars in the late 2030s.
NASA's Artemis 1 mission manager, Michael Sarafin, also shared the spacecraft's final performance during today's reentry and landing. He explained that:
In terms of contingencies during re-entry, I don't see any issues with separating the crew and service module, re-orienting the spacecraft to the re-entry interface position, taking an aerodynamic picture, the entire jump profile. In the process we had two long outages, each lasting six minutes. After we get the capsule back to shore, we need to look at the mission data recorders to see if there's anything related. But early on, the spacecraft passed the re-jump path well. As Howard mentioned earlier, the approach guidance system was very specific to the intended landing site.
NASA will now evaluate data from Orion over the next few months to reach final conclusions about its performance. It aims to select the Artemis II crew early next year.