Despite all the rumors about the possible cancellation of the Artemis lunar program, NASA continues to implement it. Preparations for the second mission are well underway. In addition to specialists from the space agency, engineers from Lockheed Martin and Northop Grumman are also involved.
Preparing for the launch of Artemis-2
The Artemis-2 mission should take place despite all the political traps and organizational difficulties. At least, that’s what all NASA officials say in the spring of 2025. Space agency engineers are continuing technical work to ensure the launch goes as planned.
This should occur no later than April 2026. Four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft are expected to fly around our moon and return to Earth. This will be the last step before visiting the Moon. The flight will last 10 days.
However, there have been a lot of rumors surrounding whether it will be implemented lately. The Trump administration says very little about Artemis, and Elon Musk calls for the program to be scrapped altogether. And all this is against the background of existing technical problems.
Preparing for the launch
But despite this, NASA experts believe that the best thing to do now is to continue preparations for the launch. Because it’s the only way to prevent China from getting on the Moon sooner. That’s why preparations are in full swing.
Representatives of Lockheed Martin and Northop Grumman, which are the main contractors of the project and are responsible for both the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, also agree with all this. They said the Artemis-1 mission in 2022 collected a lot of valuable data and identified a lot of problems.
Therefore, for more than two years now, engineers have been making changes to the design of the rocket and ship or finding other ways to overcome the problems. In particular, it was recently decided to continue using the Orion heat shield unchanged and only adjust the final phase of the flight.
According to spacenews.com
