Things you don't know about the Artemis II Mission

Four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule mounted on the tip of this enormous rocket, the SLS, accelerated upwards, in a minute and a half they were already going faster than sound trying to get out of the Earth's atmosphere, but to go out into space and stay up there for a while, you not only need to go up, if you go up vertically, as soon as you run out of fuel, you fall vertically, that's how gravity works, to avoid falling, you need to move to one side and quickly, that's why the SLS turned until it was on its side, as he continued to accelerate, not just up, but sideways.

In a few minutes it reached the horizontal speed it needed to avoid falling and thus enter orbit around the Earth. The two enormous boosters detached when they exhausted their solid fuel, but the SLS continued accelerating with its four powerful engines while burning 1,000 tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

In case something is going wrong with the launch, such as the rocket losing control, the capsule with the astronauts is detached from the rest of the vehicle and this, which is a type of small rocket, takes the capsule away to a safe distance and opens some parachutes so that the crew lands in one piece, it is only used during the most critical moments of the launch and then it is discarded.

The Orion capsule reached orbit and the main stage, now without fuel, separated. The engine of the next stage was turned on to reach a higher orbit. After exhausting its fuel, it also separated, leaving the Orion capsule alone, mounted on the service module that has the necessary propellants to take it to the Moon. the next missions to the Moon when the Orion docks with the StarShip of the private companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively, whoever is ready first wins the job.

The Orion capsule, which in the case of this mission is called Integrity, carried out the translunar injection propulsion, this means that it turned on its main engine to give it the impulse that will take the capsule to the Moon and while all this was happening, the crew could not use the toilet because a failure alert came on. Fortunately, they were able to fix it, but for a few hours they had to use these high-tech devices to make the One.

The astronauts had several respites in which they made several video calls with mission control in Houston and also took several spectacular photos, like the one above, in which we see the night side of the Earth and its thin atmosphere shining in the backlight, here we can even see the auroras at the poles in green and reddish tones and a thin bright line that surrounds the entire earth, it is the sodium line, they are sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere that when ionized by sunlight emit a very bright light. faint that can only be visible in the dark and backlit.

We can also see Brazil on the right with its shining coastal cities, although it is upside down, and the huge Sahara desert in Africa on the left, to the right of the Earth, Venus shines and we can also see a glow that could be part of the Corona of the Sun, which is like its atmosphere and is what we can only see during a total eclipse from Earth, but it could also be something called zodiacal light.

While the astronauts were sleeping, mission control checked the exterior of the integrity and the service module to see that everything was in order. Takeoffs are very violent and detecting any damage to the ship is very important so as not to waste time and look for a solution if needed. Fortunately, the integrity was in perfect condition.

Later, a small propulsion was carried out to correct the trajectory, in this case only the smaller secondary engines were turned on. It is assumed that after this impulse there would be three other trajectory corrections, that is, ignitions of the engines that would be carried out during the trip to make the small adjustments that may be needed, but this first correction was so exact that the next two corrections were canceled.

Later they told the astronauts that they had reached the halfway point to the Moon. News that caught them all with their heads stuck in different corners of the capsule.

The Artemis 2 mission, even though it went to the moon, is still a test, a rehearsal, here all the details that need to be fixed for the next mission came out, like the moment in the image above when they asked the astronauts to cover the windows with their t-shirts because the sunshades that prevent sunlight from entering were getting too hot.

The astronauts also carried out a manual driving test to check that the ship's navigation worked correctly and to practice if they needed to do so. They also put on the pressurized suits and reduced the pressure in the capsule, in this way they were able to confirm that the suits work and that in the event of a depressurization they would keep the crew safe and healthy.

There were many evaluations of the systems carried out by the astronauts as well as the equipment on the ground, fortunately everything went very well, and once on the ground they repaired more calmly, and they thanked the heat shield which was the most speculative factor in the media, good for NASA.

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