Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, is not the only person who believes that in this decade, people will be able to spend more time on the Moon.
The Artemis missions, "enable us to have a sustainable platform and transportation system that allows us to learn how to operate in that deep space environment," Howard Hu, who oversees NASA's Orion lunar spacecraft programme, told the BBC.
Hu was cited as saying in the story that was published on Sunday, "we're going to be sending people down to the surface and they're going to be living on that surface and doing science."
In order to make a significant leap when travelling to Mars, he continued, "it's really going to be very important for us to learn a little bit beyond our Earth's orbit."
Orion is five days into the 25.5-day Artemis I mission and is still heading in the direction of the Moon. The uncrewed Orion was travelling at 371 miles per hour on Sunday, having travelled 232,683 miles from Earth and 39,501 miles from the Moon. It's the first step toward long-term deep space exploration that we are taking, not just for the United States but for the entire globe, according to Hu.
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The NASA official said, "I mean, we are going back to the Moon, we're working towards a sustainable programme and this is the vehicle that will carry the people that will land us back on the Moon again."
The ambitious, uncrewed Artemis I Moon mission, which had two failed attempts and had been delayed for years and cost billions of dollars, was launched into space by the US space agency last week.
The Orion spacecraft was launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida to the Moon's orbit. The Orion will keep going until it reaches the Moon, where it will orbit for a few days until it is likely to return to Earth on December 11.
NASA intends to undertake the first crewed Moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972 in 2025. The first woman and the first person of colour to set foot on the moon will be included in that.
Artemis I will lay the groundwork for future deep space human exploration and show how NASA is prepared to take humanity to the Moon and beyond.
(With inputs from IANS)
