Description
Added on the 17/12/2020 13:00:00 - Copyright : EFE Inglés
The Artemis program marks the first step in the new era of human exploration. Together with commercial and international partners like JAXA, NASA hopes to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon to launch missions to Mars. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Toyota are also contributing to the programme. MHI will do so through the development of the LUPEX – acronym in English for the Lunar Polar Expedition – and Toyota through the joint development of a manned lunar rover with JAXA. With this "Lunar Cruiser", Toyota hopes to apply the honed technologies used in the extreme conditions of the Moon on Earth.
NASA unveils its Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 2 space mission, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission scheduled for late 2024, will take a crew of four astronauts to the Moon. IMAGES
NASA's Orion space capsule splashes down safely in the Pacific, completing the Artemis-1 mission -- a more than 25-day journey around the Moon with an eye to returning humans there in coming years. IMAGES
Six scientists, completely isolated from the outside world for 17 days for an experiment imitating a trip to the moon, spoke to the press after completing their mission. Five Russians and one German participating in the experiment, nicknamed ‘SIRIUS’ or the Scientific international research in unique terrestrial station), imitated a space trip to the moon on Friday, after being locked on a terrestrial space capsule for 17 days. The experiment aimed to examine psychological and physical effects of confinement. During the imitation flight, team members performed various scientific experiments in the mock-up spaceship and responded to simulated emergency situations, including medical situations and sleep deprivation.
This four-wheeled robot rover is undergoing its final trials on Japan's Tottori Sand Dunes before it will be flown into space and out to its final test - a 1,640 foot ride on the surface of the moon. Called the Moonraker, the rover was built by Team Hakuto of Japan to compete with 15 other teams from all over the world for the $20 million dollar grand prize in the Google Lunar XPrize competition. Google's Lunar XPrize competition calls for participating teams to create a rover, launch it into space, land it on the moon, have it travel at least 1,640 feet, and then send images of its travels back to the earth. The first team to successfully complete the challenge will take home the grand prize. Team Hakuto, which means 'white rabbit' in Japanese, is well on its way to securing the prize money - their Moonraker rover is scheduled to be launched from Earth by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket soon. The purpose is to create a cheap machine to help humans easily explore the moon, and maybe even prepare it for colonization. The Hakuto team hope that the Moonraker will be able to explore holes on the moon's surface and perhaps discover cave systems. The future looks interesting indeed.
|
Support : Technical 
- Content 
- Editors 
