NASA’s much anticipated Artemis project attained a milestone as its Orion space craft passed the structural tests on Friday.The Artemis I project aims at sending a woman astronaut together with a team to the Moon.NASA continues its lunar man missions after a long gap of 47 years,the last voyage been on December of 1972 with the culmination of Apollo 17 mission.
‘Artemis’ is named after the daughter of Zeus- Artemis,the Greek goddess of mother hood,virginity and hunting. Interestingly the space craft Orion is named after the sole male companion that Artemis admired-‘Orion the hunter’, which is now a constellation.
According to a statement issued by NASA, before it actually allowed astronauts to fly the Orion on the Artemis missions, engineers needed to make sure that the spacecraft would be able to withstand the stresses of launch, climb to orbit, harsh conditions of deep space transit, and return to Earth.
Beside flying the first woman and the next man to the Moon, the program which has 3 stages (Artemis I,II and III) also aims to explore as much of the moon’s surface as possible and create sustainable missions to the Earth’s satellite by 2028.
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