(San Diego) Their trip around the moon is not planned until September 2025, but the four astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission are already preparing for their return: Over the past eight days, they have been training at sea with the American Navy off California .
Posted at 7:32 am.
Romain FONSEGRIVES Agence France-Presse
“This is crazy. This only happens in movies and we see it every day,” Commander Reid Wiseman said Wednesday at Naval Base San Diego in his bright blue astronaut uniform.
The evening before, the quartet was traveling on a small rubber boat in the Pacific.
Aboard a massive amphibious assault ship, hundreds of U.S. military sailors, divers and pilots had to coordinate their efforts to rescue and airlift the space explorers.
PHOTO PATRICK T. FALLON, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
An essential dress rehearsal for the final stage of a historic mission.
Mr. Wiseman and his three colleagues are expected to be the first people to approach the moon since the end of the Apollo program more than 50 years ago.
If all goes well, they will fly over the star during a ten-day voyage aboard the Orion capsule before returning to wash up at sea.
Target Mars
How do I deal with a possible storm? What measures should be taken if one of the astronauts is injured? What can be done to lure the empty capsule into the ship's hold?
The training allows you to address all of these details, especially thanks to a life-size replica of Orion: a large black cone nicknamed “Darth Vader” for its resemblance to the Star Wars villain's helmet.
“We're constantly thinking about what we're going to do,” Lily Villareal, the NASA manager overseeing the return phase of the mission, told AFP. “We have to prepare for all scenarios. »
With the Artemis program, humanity is returning to the moon, no longer to reach it, but to “stay” there with a permanent presence, she remembers.
If Artemis 2 is content to fly over the moon, the program's third mission, scheduled for late 2026, will have to land humans there.
The goal is then to send missions there lasting several weeks, then to build a base on the surface and a space station in orbit around the moon, which can serve as a relay for the conquest of Mars.
Because now it is the Red Planet that interests NASA.
“Our earth has limited resources,” emphasizes Ms. Villareal. “So we have to figure out what we can do for the good of humanity. »
“Be a leader”
But reclaiming the moon goes beyond the simple goal of making it a stepping stone to more distant space. For several years, private companies have dreamed of sending tourists there, and new powers such as India, Japan and China have managed to land planes there.
Beijing also wants to land people there by 2030, putting pressure on NASA not to pile up delays.
In this context, “the question is not really why we are going there, but whether we are at the top or not,” believes Christina Koch, another Artemis 2 astronaut.
She is said to be the first woman to venture so far into space and will be joined by Canadian Jeremy Hansen and Victor Glover, the first black astronaut to take part in a lunar mission.
With its new program, NASA wants to put a woman and a black man on the moon for the first time.
The Apollo program sent 24 men there between 1969 and 1972, all white. Only eight remain alive and, like the American Navy, some veterans have taken their successors under their wings.
According to Wiseman, former Apollo 10 member Thomas Stafford invited the Artemis 2 team to lunch.
“He immediately asked us: […] “What will you do if the computers break?” “Have you thought about how their trajectories will work?” the astronaut said. “He immediately acted like a father who wanted to make sure his children got out safely. »