Artemis II crew: Anticipating cramped quarters on upcoming lunar mission

The 10-day Artemis II mission, set for 2024, will be the first crewed mission to the moon in decades.

The crew consists of American astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen.

When they blast off next year, they will be aboard an Orion spacecraft, living in its five-metre-diameter crew capsule for the duration of the ten-day mission.

“We’re going to have to understand how to live in that tight quarters, ” Glover told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “So this is going to be a unique expeditionary or teamwork challenge, but we’ve known each other for a decade-plus, and I think this group is up for it.”

The planned mission will travel the farthest of any crewed-mission into deep space after it launches from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, no later than May 2024.

“We’ll do two laps around the Earth, our first lap around will be at about 1,000 miles and then we’ll go to a high Earth orbit up to about 38,000 miles, which is farther than humans have been since 1972,” mission commander Wiseman said.

During an initial 24-hour period, the astronauts will ensure the Orion spacecraft is fully functioning before heading on a “trans-lunar injection.”

“We will do one-burn (a manoeuvre) which will push us out around the moon,” Wiseman said. “It’ll be a pretty magnificent ride.”

Mission specialist Hammock Koch said the planned launch is important to set the rest of the Artemis missions up for success.

“Our contribution is making sure that those (missions) are as successful as they can be,” she said. “So every time we learn about the operations, we’re going to be doing those life support systems that we’re going to be testing, we’re going to be thinking about the future and how our feedback and our work with the teams can make it the best it can be.”

To hear the full interview, click the link at the top of this article.