Interesting facts about Artemis II

Artemis II launches on historic mission around the moon

Artemis II begins its journey: Four astronauts blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1 on a monumental 10-day mission to circumnavigate the moon.

Historic Firsts

• Victor Glover will become the first person of color, Christina Koch the first woman, and Jeremy Hansen the first non-U.S. citizen to travel beyond low Earth orbit and to the Moon’s vicinity.
• It marks the first time since 1972 that astronauts will travel beyond low Earth orbit.

The Crew

• Christina Koch is the most experienced crew member, with 328 days in space — the longest single spaceflight by a woman — and over 42 hours of spacewalk time, including the first all-female spacewalk.
• Jeremy Hansen, 50, is a former fighter pilot and the first Canadian set to travel to the Moon.

The Rocket

• The SLS rocket rises 30 storeys high — 98 meters (322 feet) — standing 2 meters (7 feet) taller than Big Ben’s clock tower.
• Its two solid booster rockets burn through six tonnes of propellant every second, generating more thrust than 14 jumbo jets, while the core stage burns through 2.8 million litres of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Altogether, the rocket produces 8.8 million pounds of thrust over the eight minutes it takes to reach orbit.

The Journey

• The mission launched from Launch Complex 39B — the same historic pad used for Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.
• The crew will get to look down on the lunar far side, and will be the first humans to glimpse the Moon’s south pole — the site where future landing missions hope to touch down. The Moon will appear about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length, and they’ll have just three hours to make observations.
• At approximately 4,700 miles beyond the Moon, the mission will exceed previous crewed flight distance records, and reenter Earth’s atmosphere at about 25,000 miles per hour.

Cool Cargo

• The spacecraft is carrying a 1-inch square of fabric from the plane used in the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in 1903, an American flag that flew on the first and last Space Shuttle missions, and even a flag that was supposed to fly on the cancelled Apollo 18 mission — finally visiting the Moon half a century later.

Quirky Detail

• Since Artemis II is a short mission, the crew will flush their urine out into space rather than recycling it into drinking water as they do on the ISS. Their solid waste, however, will be stored and disposed of back on Earth.

Science on Board

• One cutting-edge experiment involves “organ on a chip” technology — researchers extracted and froze immature bone marrow cells from each astronaut’s blood before launch, then placed them on chips the size of a USB drive. One chip flies with the crew, the other stays on Earth for comparison

Artemis II: What’s on the Menu?