Reportage
Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, the United States returns to the Moon
The moon rocket on launch pad 39B before the unmanned Artemis I mission at Cape Canaveral, August 27, 2022. REUTERS - JOE SKIPPER
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA has started the countdown.
The first mega-rocket of the Artemis program is scheduled to take off Monday morning around 8:33 a.m. local time.
This first test flight will not be manned, but the goal for the Americans is to send astronauts back to the Moon in 2025 and this time to stay there.
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With our special correspondent at Cape Canaveral,
David Thomson
On D-1, it sits proudly on the Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B, ready to take off for the Moon.
It is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA.
At the top of its 98 meters, the Orion capsule, partly produced by the European Space Agency.
The French engineer Philippe Berthe devoted the last eleven years of his life to it.
“
Orion is a vehicle that is built to go into orbit around the Moon and transport astronauts, four astronauts who will be able to go to a space station that we will build around the Moon called the Gateway
“, he details.
► To read also: Mission Artémis I: a real challenge for European industry
Because 50 years after the mythical Apollo missions, the ambition is no longer just to walk on the Moon, but to stay there.
"
You have to imagine the Moon as another continent of the Earth,
" he says.
The idea is to extend the domain of human activities, which until now has been restricted to the surface of the Earth of course, but also to low orbit, to the Moon, to have people who will live either orbiting the Moon or on the surface.
»
Walk on the Moon again
But not yet humans for this Artemis I mission. It is a 42-day test flight to prepare Artemis II which will send four astronauts around the Moon in two years, and especially before Artemis III which will allow for the first time, in 2025, for a woman to set foot on the Moon.
Its name was chosen in echo of the Apollo program, having taken the only twelve men to have ever walked on the Moon, between 1969 and 1972. Artemis, in Greek mythology, is the twin sister of Apollo (Apollo in English) and a goddess associated with the Moon.
► Also to listen: Lionel Suchet: "The particularity of Artemis I is to install a permanent base on the Moon"
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