The Orion capsule flight has started Artemis , the program that seeks to return humans to the Moon.
After months of reprogramming, NASA ‘s Orion spacecraft was able to take off last week, kick-starting the Artemis program .
The unmanned spacecraft is bound for the moon , amid ambitious plans to bring humans back to the moon and eventually use it as a springboard to Mars .
To live soon on the Moon?
Howard Hu, leader of NASA’s Orion program, assures that the presence on the Moon could be constant, with humans living on the Moon this decade.
“We are going to send people to the surface and they will be living there doing science,” he said in an interview with the BBC .
This first voyage for the Orion spacecraft is unmanned and is intended to test the ability to take a capsule to the Moon, back and forth. It is expected to be the vehicle that takes humans to the Moon again, something that has not happened since 1972.
Hu explained that the Orion capsule has a kind of dummy inside that will record the impact of the trip on a human body.
If all goes well on this first flight of the Artemis program , the next mission will have one crew orbiting the Moon , with a third ultimately bringing humans back to the Moon .