by Riley Voss

The Artemis 1: NASA’s first mission of many attempting to establish a human presence on the Moon. Our first journey back to the big rock orbiting our planet since the original Moon landing in 1969. This is a giant leap into the future of mankind and our exploration of other planets, and a stepping stone to a colony on Mars. But what are the technical aspects of this shuttle to the future? What can we expect from the results of this mission?

NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is a test flight, used to monitor and verify that the systems that the engineers have designed and created will be able to safely and successfully send a crew of astronauts to and from the Moon. NASA states that “Artemis I, formerly Exploration Mission-1, will be the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.” According to NASA’s Artemis 1 Overview, “The primary operations goal of the mission is to assure a safe crew module entry, descent, splashdown, and recovery.” The first of the Artemis 1 missions will ensure complete safety for the astronauts embarking on the journey both to and from the Moon, while simultaneously testing the systems that will be used to launch and carry them as well as the ground systems that will be crucial for proper execution of the mission.

The Artemis 1’s trajectory will send the most powerful rocket in the world beyond the boundaries of any other spacecraft built to hold humans, according to NASA. The ship will travel “280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of about a four to six week mission.” However, due to the highly advanced technology in use on this spacecraft, the Artemis has experienced many delays in launch. The first launch attempt was taken and delayed on August 29, 2022, and has experienced ongoing technical issues since, with the next launch attempt set for September 23rd. So why should we care? What makes this technical marvel so important for the country as a whole?

Even though the Artemis 1 mission will be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, all fifty of the United States have had a hand in making this launch a reality. Since the beginning, space programs across the country, including in our own state of Wisconsin, have been contributing to the design and development of the Artemis 1. The successful launch and subsequent flight of the Artemis will be a great achievement for the U.S. as a whole, and will skyrocket NASA and America toward missions to the Moon, and eventually, Mars. So although the Artemis mission seems lightyears away from our influence here in Wisconsin, there are teams all across the state that are pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible and helping to launch our society into the future. This is what makes the Artemis 1 mission so important and so influential for us; it is the work of the entire United States coming together to create something that will bring the future closer to our reality.