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NASA Moon

For the First Time in 51 Years, NASA is Training Astronauts To Fly To the Moon (arstechnica.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The four astronauts assigned to soar beyond the far side of the Moon on NASA's Artemis II mission settled into their seats inside a drab classroom last month at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was one in a series of noteworthy moments for the four-person crew since NASA revealed the names of the astronauts who will be the first people to fly around the Moon since 1972. There was the fanfare of the crew's unveiling to the public in April and an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There will, of course, be great anticipation as the astronauts close in on their launch date, currently projected for late 2024 or 2025. But many of the crew's days over the next 18 months will be spent in classrooms, on airplanes, or in simulators, with instructors dispensing knowledge they deem crucial for the success of the Artemis II mission. In the simulator, the training team will throw malfunctions and anomalies at the astronauts to test their ability to resolve a failure that -- if it happened in space -- could cut the mission short or, in a worst-case scenario, kill them.

"In order to do those things, what knowledge do we have to impart to them? What skills do we have to teach them?" said Jacki Mahaffey, NASA's leading training officer for the Artemis II mission. "Overall, our goal is we've got a little bit in the classroom, but the more that we can get the crew in front of the displays in the vehicle mockups and really kind of immersed in that environment, the sooner, the better. Commander Reid Wiseman and his crewmates -- pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen -- were named to the Artemis II crew on April 3. Much of their time over the next two-and-a-half months was devoted to making a public relations tour, giving interviews, going to NASA centers around the country, visiting Capitol Hill, and meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Mahaffey said they also got a pre-training pep talk from Charlie Duke, who walked on the Moon on the Apollo 16 mission in April 1972. NASA hasn't trained a crew to fly to the Moon since Apollo 17 at the end of 1972, the last time astronauts walked on the lunar surface.
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For the First Time in 51 Years, NASA is Training Astronauts To Fly To the Moon More

For the First Time in 51 Years, NASA is Training Astronauts To Fly To the Moon

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  • There are people who know what their mission is and should be; and then there are jerkoffs who think empty talk accompanied by jobs in Alabama is the point of their existence.

    • They aren't conflicted so much as they are still just a tool of the US gov, used mostly for propaganda purposes. Like all this alien bullshit.

      Then again, it could be worse. mElon could be training them how to vape and draw swastikas while wearing moon gloves.

    • >There are people who know what their mission is and should be; and then there are jerkoffs who think empty talk accompanied by jobs in Alabama is the point of their existence. Who are the people who have a mission, who know that it is different from what it should be, and what should their missions be?

      Who are the jerkoffs, and with what jobs in Alabama.

      • The fact that Marshall Space Flight Center, in Alabama, does live fire exercises with rocket engines and is the center of efforts to manrate gear to exceed the design expectations, seems to be very important. The jobs that must be in the northeast seem to be where administrative cost and administrative failure is induced into NASA programs. The mission of marshall space center is closer to actual hardware development than any of the other centers.

        The source of decades of management failure is squar

  • Astronaut Eugene Cernan is known to be the last man to walk on the Moon in 1972, and his record is safe for another few years before the first batch of humans returns to the lunar surface to etch their names in the history books.

  • 1. Flap hard
    2. Hold your breath
    3. Pick up rocks

  • NASA is slipping if they don't have a backup crew.

    SpaceX will beat them to the moon, anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      My first reaction to your comment was "Bullshit. No way NASA would go at this with no backups." but after a brief search it appears that you are correct. That's screwy.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      SpaceX will beat them to the moon, anyway.

      Uh, NASA is funding the SpaceX lunar lander development. The latter is a NASA contractor, not a competitor.
      The China Manned Space Agency is a competitor, or will be.

    • This was also my very first thought. Please tell me there is a second crew in training somewhere.

      What happens if one of these crew members gets cancer, or a serious injury in the intervening 18 (OK way more than 18) months?

    • SpaceX will beat them to the moon, anyway.

      Do you actually think SpaceX is doing any of this separately to NASA? Who do you think is funding SpaceX?

  • Just kidding. Go NASA!
  • so the moon nazis going for a stroll don't count?

  • Been a while (Score:4, Informative)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @07:21PM (#63697650)

    Fun fact: Nobody born past 1935 has been to the moon.

  • Their job is to swing around the Moon. The entire job could be done (and done better) on autopilot. And we already know more about longer durations in free fall than this mission will teach anyone.

    What they might bring back is some interesting new medical evidence of what happens to humans who go far enough away from Earth to no longer have any protection from its magnetic field. Maybe something we just weren't yet sophisticated enough to see the last time we sent people out that way.

    Now, when there's a

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