Those chosen for the Artemis III mission

The Artemis 3 mission is not as originally planned, the mission where we would see astronauts walking on the surface of the moon again. Recently, NASA changed the objectives and schedule of the Artemis missions. This third will be a test mission, but a crucial and very complicated mission that will take place in low Earth orbit, about 400 km high, probably at the end of 2027. The mission with humans on the moon walking on the lunar surface, specifically at the lunar south pole, will be on Artemis. 4.

In principle and if there are no complications, it should be in 2028, although between mission 3 and mission 4 we will have to see two spectacular missions from SpaceX and Blue Origin. The first, because it is the one that has the contract for the main lander, would be from SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, Blue Origin is Jezf Bezos' company, in that mission we would see refueling in the space of the Starship, reloads in plural, there is talk of six or eight, although it may be more, the matter is not yet clear, these refills are needed so that the ship can go unmanned to the moon, without a crew, but perhaps with some robots, perhaps Teslas Optimus imitating several of the functions that astronauts would have to do, this point is not official, it is my opinion, but I think it would not be strange at all.

In previous missions, NASA put mannequins that imitated the human body, ie its weight, allowed checks on the security of the anchors and carried sensors to measure radiation and other factors, we are in the 21st century. Why not use a mannequin that can also move like a human and activate certain controls or machinery? I see it as more logical, but we'll see what happens. The point is that the Starship will have to get to the moon, land or land, perform some maneuvers, probably try the crane or elevator to descend to the surface, since between the entrance of the ship and the ground there is 35 m high, the Starship is colossal and then it will have to take off from the Moon.

You will not need to return to Earth, since the mission of the Lunar Starship or HLS model is to take astronauts from the Moon's orbit to the surface and take them off the lunar surface to return them to the lunar orbit where they would enter the Orion spacecraft, which is the ship in charge of taking the astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit and then from lunar orbit to Earth, home. We will have to see this mission before the trip with astronauts, since obviously we have to check that everything works well. Blue Origin will also have to do a similar test with its lunar lander, the Blue Moon, it begins a chain of tests and amazing missions, because all this has to be ready before 2028, but what we have in front of us right now is the Artemis 3, which will be the test where it will be certified that the Orion ship can connect correctly with the Starship and with the Blue Moon.

In principle, with the two lunar landers if they were available and if there is only one, then with the one that is available. The mission will last two weeks, the plan, if the two landers are ready, will be for Blue Origin to launch the Blue Moon first. The Blue Moon will wait in orbit for the arrival of the Orion ship, they will dock, the astronauts will spend about two days carrying out tests, including entering the lander, then the Orion will undock and wait for the arrival of the Starship, which as you see in the illustration is enormous compared to the Orion ship. Once docked, they will do the same tests to see that everything works correctly, it is a complex mission and personally I think it is much more complicated than the trip we have seen to the orbit of the Moon on the Artemis 2 mission, since a failure in docking and we would have a disaster.

Therefore, the level of the astronauts has to be very high, NASA has chosen the following. Randy Bresnik of NASA will act as commander of the mission. He was born on September 11, 1967 in Forknox, Kentucky, United States. He is of Slovenian descent.

We also have Andre Douglas, he is from NASA and will be a mission specialist, he was born on December 11, 1985 in Miami Florida, he is a systems engineer with a doctorate, he served in the United States Coast Guard, he is a naval architect and officer and in addition, he has five university degrees in engineering, he was selected by NASA in 2021, he worked in maritime robotics, planetary defense and space exploration and well, this is the first time he is going to travel to space, but okay, it has to be the first time. for any astronaut.

The next would be Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, he is Italian, he was born on September 27, 1976, in Paterno, Sicily, Italy, and he is a colonel in the Italian Air Force, as well as a test pilot, he was the first Italian and third European to command the international space station, he has accumulated more than 366 days in space and six spacewalks, and because Luca Parmitano lived one of the most serious incidents in the history of spacewalks. He was very close to death, it was on July 16, 2013, during his second spacewalk with Chris Cassidi. After 44 minutes doing various tasks there in space, Parmitano began to feel cold water on the back of his head inside the helmet, the water coming from a failure in the suit's cooling system.

The water began to increase rapidly, it reached 1.5, which is the typical amount of a bottle of mineral water, you may think that, okay, it's not much, 1 and a half liters, the spacesuit is not just the helmet. What is the problem? Well, the problem is weightlessness or microgravity on Earth. A liter and a half of water would simply be a nuisance because it would fall towards the feet, but in space there is no gravity and water accumulates in the area where it comes out and that point was the helmet, so Parmitano, without being able to do anything else, began to see how the water covered his eyes, ears and nose, he lost visibility, hearing and had difficulty breathing.

The walk, of course, was aborted and the two astronauts were able to return inside the space station where they could remove the helmet and free themselves from that water trap. Anyone would have panicked and it would have been fatal, but Parmitano survived thanks to his extreme calm and the instructions of his partner Casidi. For example, Parmitano's ultra-calm character, who after that terrible experience said that "it has been a terrifying, but formative, experience." Training, learning from extreme situations, okay. The point is that NASA took note of the incident and improvements were applied to the suits to avoid another similar situation in the future.

To close this list of the four chosen, we have Frank Rubio, NASA astronaut, who will be a specialist on this mission, born on December 11, 1975 in Los Angeles, California. Although he considers Miami as his hometown, it must also be taken into account that he lived his early years in El Salvador, he has American nationality and is of Salvadoran origin, he is a colonel in the United States Army, a black hawk helicopter pilot, a flight doctor and a family surgeon. He was selected by NASA in 2017 and has the American record of 371 days in space in a single mission on the international space station, impressive, in addition, his life and that of his mother is an epic story of effort and improvement.

Rubio is the son of a single Salvadoran mother who worked whatever she could, low-income jobs, all in order to raise her children, Frank and his younger brother Isaías, Frank Rubio is a doctor, he is a space veteran, an army veteran, he is literally a hero, but whenever he can publicly thank his mother for her role and efforts, she is his hero. These are those chosen for the Artemis 3 mission. What do you think of this mission?

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