Christina Hammock Koch, first woman to fly to the star; member of Artemis II

Madrid. The Artemis II mission will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a flight mission lasting approximately 10 days, the first manned flight of the Artemis program.

If the launch does not occur today, the remaining launch opportunities in that month (in Central European Daylight Time) will take place from April 3 to 7.

The four astronauts travel aboard the spacecraft Orionwhich will be the crew’s home during their approximately 1.1 million kilometer, 10-day journey. They will live and work in the spacecraft’s crew module, while the service block will provide the essential products astronauts need to stay alive, including drinking water, nitrogen and oxygen for breathing.

The spaceship Orion It will orbit the Earth several times, then embark on a four-day journey to the Moon, fly by the natural satellite and return to Earth.

After reaching Earth orbit, the rocket’s upper stage will propel Orion to a highly elliptical orbit, where the mission crew and equipment will verify that all systems are working correctly.

During this phase, astronauts will also take manual control of the spacecraft to conduct a demonstration of proximity operations with Orion using the European Service Module engines. These capabilities will be crucial in future Artemis missions.

Once all checks and demonstrations are completed, the second European Service Module will give the spacecraft Orion the final push to enter lunar orbit, flying almost 7,500 kilometers beyond the Moon and orbiting it before returning home on a safe free return trajectory.

The cabin of the Orion It has a habitable volume of 9.34 cubic meters, offering the crew approximately the same living space as two minivans. After their journey into space atop the SLS rocket, the crew will stow the footrests of Wiseman and Glover’s seats, giving them more room to move during the flight.

The ship Orion It has almost 60 percent more space than the 5.95 cubic meters of the Apollo command module, the manned space program that took humans to the Moon in the 1960s.

Upon return, the crew will endure high-speed, high-temperature entry through Earth’s atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

The spaceship Orion It is completely different from the Space Shuttle, which was a very large, completely reusable ship that carried a crew of six, had its own mechanical arm and could carry cargo.

“The space shuttle was too heavy, it did not have the capabilities to escape the Earth’s gravitational force and escape from orbit. For that, a completely different spacecraft was needed, new, much smaller, but with very interesting characteristics, which is the space shuttle. Orionwhich has a smaller crew”, details from the European Space Agency (ESA, for its acronym in English).

The ship, although it cannot land on the Moon, is capable of getting there and operating for several weeks and then bringing the astronauts back. The only part that is recovered from the mission is the capsule, which is where the crew is located. It has a series of services that the Apollo mission capsules did not have, such as an exercise machine, a toilet or a small kitchen.

Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009 and completed training in May 2011. He is a 27-year Navy veteran, pilot, father, engineer and Baltimore native. The pilot is Victor J. Glover, selected in 2013. He was a pilot for the SpaceX Crew mission. The first woman to fly to the Moon is Christina Hammock Koch, who was chosen in 2013. She has been a flight engineer on the International Space Station for several expeditions. Koch set the record for the longest individual space flight by a woman, totaling 328 days in space, and participated in the first all-female spacewalk.

The first non-American astronaut to travel to the Moon will be Jeremy Hansen, of the Canadian Space Agency. Born in 1976 in Ontario, he grew up on a farm near Ailsa Craig. Colonel Hansen is married and has three children. His main hobbies are sailing (cruising and regattas), rock climbing and mountain biking.