Artemis II
Left to right: NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Unexpectedly, we watched the launch of Artemis II on Wednesday night. Earlier in the day, we had turned on the television, having misread the expected launch time in minutes rather than hours. We decided we would not stay up to watch it, but somehow we did.
I remember previous manned launches being extremely exciting. Maybe it was the uncertainty of the process, particularly after the tragedy of the space shuttle failures, ‘Challenger’ in 1986 and ‘Columbia’ in 2003, each resulting in the deaths of their seven crew members.
Artemis II is the first mission to take humans out of low Earth orbit since 1972 and will take them further from Earth than ever before. It is planned to travel beyond the far ‘dark’ side of the moon, then slip back into the gravitational pull that will bring it back to earth, the pleasingly called the ‘free-return trajectory.’
Nonetheless, there are many things that could go wrong during the ten-day mission, and no-one associated with it will breathe easily until the four crew members have returned safely.
The launch was impressive, but not nail-biting – perhaps it was the presenters, who seemed to lack enthusiasm. However many rocket launches there are, each one is significant and inspiring. Those who complain that such ventures are vanity projects and the money could be more usefully used on Earth miss the point that we have benefitted from the discoveries developed through space exploration.
We speedily take some such benefits for granted, without realising how they came about. For example, we have GPS navigation, satellite broadcasting, improvements in MRI and CT scanning, lightweight prosthetic limbs, water purification, fire-resistant materials, shock absorption materials used in helmets and car seats, monitoring storms and wildfires.The most obvious one is the space blanket, seen wrapped around the shoulders of every marathon runner at the end of the race, or used in emergencies for accident victims.
It was developed by NASA in 1964!
I wish they would focus the time, effort and incredible expenditures fixing the problems here on Earth.
ReplyDeleteI must admit - though I know there are advances made by these types of missions; I am one of those people who think the money (taxes) could be better spent. I'm not feeling very spendy with tax dollars right now sigh.
ReplyDelete