NASA blasted its new mega-rocket on a historic journey to the moon.
NASA's 32-story mega moon rocket gleamed statuesque in the night as it pierced the sky from a small spit of land in the Atlantic Ocean.
In this Slogging thread, our community discussed the mind-blowing launch of the Artemis 1 by NASA and some cool prospects for space travel.
This Slogging thread is by Valentine Enedah, Mónica Freitas and Jadesola T. Kareem occurred in slogging's official #space channel, and has been edited for readability.
To the moon🚀🔥
https://mashable.com/article/nasa-artemis-1-launch-rocket-moon-success
NASA waived off two launch attempts in late August and early September — followed by a delay courtesy of Hurricane Ian — the U.S. space agency.
The Artemis I mission, NASA's first deep space voyage of an astronaut-capable spacecraft in fifty years, was launched at 1:48 a.m. on Nov. 16. If all goes as planned, Orion will make a whirling voyage more than a quarter million miles from Earth, passing the moon by a distance of 40,000 miles. The U.S. space agency estimates that when it returns to the Pacific Ocean on December 11, it will have traveled 1.3 million miles.
On Nov. 30, Tokyo-based ispace's Hakuto-R lander is scheduled to launch for the moon's Atlas Crater to ready for a soft touchdown, which may be the first ever by a private company on the lunar surface.
On Nov. 30 at 3:39 a.m. EST (0839 GMT), Hakuto-R will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and won't reach the until at least April 2023. After touching down, Hakuto-R will launch Rashid, a tiny United Arab Emirates rover. The four-wheeled rover will use a high-resolution camera, a thermal imager, a microscopic imager, and a probe designed to look at electrical charges on the lunar surface to study the moon for 14 Earth days.
If the Tokyo-based company succeeds, it would be the first to land a Japanese spacecraft on the moon. What's more, it could be the first successful private delivery of cargo to the lunar surface ever. In 2019, an Israeli spacecraft crashed into the moon and may have scattered some intriguing artifacts.
"Our first mission will lay the groundwork for unleashing the moon's potential and transforming it into a robust and vibrant economic system," Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, said in a statement Thursday (Nov. 17), one day after NASA kickstarted its Artemis human lunar program with the successful moon-bound launch of the uncrewed
This new era of lunar exploration and travel "won't be done entirely by NASA, it will be done with international partners and with commercial partners."
Well, I think I can now modify the statement made by Neil Armstrong - "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
"That's some greater steps for man and the most gigantic leap for mankind"😉
Looks like we are getting closer to that time, people would start living on the moon.
What do you think?
Very umbrella-academy-esque. I think we still have a long way to go until we're able to live outside the planet earth. Building infrastructures outside Earth is crazy difficult, close to impossible. How would you get people to commit to doing construction work on the moon? 😂 But it's an interesting time to be alive for sure. I'm glad organizations are getting involved in space travel (not only NASA).
- Valentine Enedah - It's always interesting to see all these things happening in the travel space industry🚀
- Mónica Freitas - Funny how I never finished Umbrella academy. It was just too weird! Not like it was as weird as Stranger Things but yeah.🙂
I guess there should already be a plan on how they plan to build infrastructure on Mars. It would be game-changing. I saw a picture that the Dalle-e generated to represent how buildings would look on Mars; it is so beautiful.
What do you think?
-Jadesola T. Kareem- Indeed! Do you think it would take a long time for Africa to jump in on the space fun?
You should read the comics Valentine Enedah
Less weird. I like these buildings. I'll have to dig up more on the material and how they plan to supply them with water and light or electricity, but it's interesting to witness the possibility of going beyond just a possibility
- Mónica Freitas- , I will check it them surely. I guess they would probably know what to do about power and water. There's this popular movie "The Martian" which was released in 2015. He got stuck on Mars and produced water by burning leftover rocket fuel and extracting the hydrogen from the resulting chemical reaction. He also generated power from solar arrays and batteries.
- Valentine Enedah - you're right. If they have fuel, power won't be an issue. But to make it a lasting and functional place, they have to be able to sustain agriculture and farm animals. Unless they go vegan, but this makes agriculture way more crucial to the success of this operation
Mónica Freitas Indeed! I think they would need a lot of protein hence most people might not need to be vegan. I'm not quite sure.
Nevertheless, it is still a good prospect.