Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA’s next moon astronauts are guaranteed an awesome view

By
Add as a preferred source on Google
 

The next astronauts heading to the moon are guaranteed breathtaking views as they approach the lunar surface in the crew module, NASA said this week.

Recommended Videos

The space agency’s Kathy Lueders has tweeted a photo (below) of a new window panel for the front of the Orion spacecraft that’s set to transport astronauts to the moon in four years’ time for the first lunar landing since 1972.

Lueder’s photo shows a cone panel with openings for large windows that will enable the stunning view. The spacecraft has been designed by Orion’s lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, with the panels manufactured by AMRO Fabricating Corp. of South El Monte, California. The completed panel is now headed for NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, Louisiana, where engineers will weld it and other panels as part of Orion’s pressure vessel.

“It’s truly exciting to have the first piece of the Artemis III Orion spacecraft completed at AMRO that will enable American astronauts to build a sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” said acting Orion program manager Howard Hu.

#Artemis III astronauts will get an awesome view on approach to the Moon thanks to a newly completed window panel for the @NASA_Orion crew module. See the manufacturing process and hear about Orion progress: https://t.co/DPnm5jdZvq pic.twitter.com/4iDxCm5zw8

— Kathy Lueders (@KathyLueders) August 19, 2020

Currently scheduled for October 2024, the Artemis III mission will be the third flight of NASA’s Orion crew capsule following two test missions. The first, Artemis I, will perform an uncrewed fly-by of the moon in 2021. Artemis II, set for 2023, will mark the first crewed test, and will also involve Orion passing the moon without landing.

How We Are Going to the Moon - 4K

NASA has been hiring new astronauts for further Artemis missions throughout the 2020s and is currently operating various training programs to perfect the various scientific techniques that will enable the astronauts to effectively explore the lunar surface.

NASA says that human exploration of the moon via the Artemis program “offers a unique opportunity to test, refine, and perfect many of the technologies and complex operations that will be needed to land humans on Mars, perform their work on the surface, and safely return them to Earth.”

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics
Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water
A billion tons still comes up short
Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.

Read more
NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot
NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies
NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Read more
NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.
Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).

Read more