Artemis program | Humans on their way to the Moon again

The last time humans visited the moon, the satellite was a destination.

Mathieu Perreault
The Press

40 days

The Artemis 1 mission is due to take off Monday morning at 8:33 a.m., unless something unexpected happens. It will head for the Moon, where it will spend between 39 and 42 days. “We want to test all the systems, from launch to recovery of the capsule,” explains Isabelle Tremblay, director, astronauts, life sciences and space medicine, at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). “You have to see if the environmental conditions are what you expect, that everything is working perfectly, before sending astronauts. The mission data, for example accelerations, vibrations and radiations, will be scrutinized next. “The Artemis missions and on the Gateway space station will be much longer and farther than those of Apollo,” adds Mr.^me Tremblay. The Apollo lunar missions lasted between ten days and two weeks. The Apollo program also had an unmanned mission around the Moon, Apollo 6, in 1968.

Artemis 2

A Canadian astronaut will participate in the second Artemis mission, which will remain in orbit around the Moon without landing and will not take place before 2024. He will be chosen from the four current astronauts: David Saint-Jacques, Jeremy Hansen, Jenni Sidey- Gibbons and Joshua Kutryk. For the mission with the moon landing, Artemis 3, there will be no Canadians. Artemis 3 is scheduled for 2025 at the earliest. Will one of the four Canadian astronauts land on the moon afterwards? “It is possible, answers M.^me Tremblay. There are no plans yet, but if we contribute enough to the program, yes. In an essay published this week in the journal Aviation Weekformer astronaut Harrison Schmitt has proposed that an Artemis mission explore the South Pole of the Moon, where ice is found in craters.

Gateway Station

A Canadian astronaut will, however, participate in a mission to the lunar station Gateway, which is scheduled for launch in late 2024. The CSA is contributing with a robotic arm, the Canadarm3, for Gateway. The reason Artemis 1 will last so long is that Gateway will be located farther from the Moon than any manned mission. Its elliptical orbit will take it up to 70,000 km from the lunar surface. The Artemis program and the experiments that will be carried out on board the Gateway station will pave the way to the next destination for manned missions: Mars.

Canada and the Moon

Isabelle Tremblay believes that Canada must participate in the “new lunar economy” that will be developed from the mineral resources of the Moon. “Canada will be the second country to send an astronaut into lunar orbit. I think it reflects our abilities, says M^me Tremblay. This is the first step towards exploring Mars. Extending our presence beyond Earth is part of our instinct as a living species. It demonstrates our abilities and it’s reassuring about the means to improve our living conditions. »

Asteroid Defense

Artemis 1 will also bring into orbit ten “cubesats”, small satellites less than one meter in diameter. Most will examine the Moon, including a Japanese lander. But one of the cubesats, Biosentinel, will examine the effect of space radiation near the Moon on the growth of a yeast. And another, NEA Scout, will travel to an asteroid crossing Earth’s orbit (near-Earth asteroid). “It will be an asteroid the size of the one that caused damage in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013,” says NASA’s Julie Castillo-Rogez, who is chief science officer of NEA Scout. “It’s important for planetary defense. We will approach and fly over the asteroid very slowly to determine if it is a dust pile or a solid core. This will allow, if necessary, to determine the type of damage that such an asteroid can cause and how to deviate its trajectory. The Chelyabinsk asteroid had an estimated diameter of 20 meters.

The solar sails

NEA Scout will also be the first exploration mission using solar sails, which propel a probe using photons from the Sun. “It’s the space propulsion of the XXI^e century,” says Les Johnson, head of NEA Scout at NASA, who has been working on solar sails for 20 years. “It’s a technology that will allow us to explore other solar systems, because we can reach very high speeds. Eventually, Earth’s defense against asteroids could be provided by hundreds of cubesats powered by solar sails, which would closely examine threatening asteroids, according to Johnson.