Artemis II lifts off: destination Moon with the Orion spacecraft
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen have taken off from Kennedy Space Center, bound for the Moon. More than 50 years after Apollo, this first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit marks a historic milestone for NASA’s Artemis programme. The stakes are twofold: to validate the Orion spacecraft's systems and hardware essential for astronaut survival in deep space and to pave the way for the critical docking demonstrations of the Artemis III mission.
Image courtesy Airbus
A complex 10 day mission
Reaching lunar orbit requires a spacecraft far more sophisticated than those used to reach the ISS. Orion must travel to the Moon, more than 400,000 kilometres from Earth, perform a loop around it (the lunar fly-by), and return safely to Earth.
For this journey, the crew relies on a key part of the spacecraft: the European Service Module (ESM), designed and built by Airbus on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). Its contribution begins at the very start of the voyage, providing the vital elements for survival: air, drinking water, power and a regulated temperature within the crew module.