About a month after the successful launch: the Artemis 1 mission is expected to come to an end today (Sunday), with Orion 0, NASA’s unmanned Orion spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean. The final landing of Apollo 17.

During the mission that lasted 25 days, the space vehicle circled the moon and even reached a distance of more than 434 thousand km from the earth, more than any other spacecraft designed to carry humans.

The Artemis program includes three missions, with the third – the manned landing on the moon – originally planned for launch about seven years after former President Donald Trump signed an order instructing the US space agency to return to the moon, but the date has been pushed back to 2025. Senior officials at NASA and other space agencies around the world noted More often than not, the moon is a necessary step in the future arrival to Mars, since it could be a waypoint on the long way. The possible meaning of the postponement in question is that the arrival to Mars will also be delayed.

The goal of this series of missions is to succeed and eventually land two American citizens on the moon – when this time, unlike the previous times, one of the astronauts is expected to be a woman. About two years ago, NASA revealed the names of the astronauts nominated for the program, nine women and nine men, two of whom (a man and a woman) are expected to join the special group of humans who were privileged to set foot on the moon – which includes 18 people.

During the mission, the systems and technologies developed for the benefit of human existence in deep space will be tested for the first time in an actual mission. A limited number of countries participate in the mission: the European Space Agency is a key partner, and it has technologies from Japan, Italy, as well as the joint experiment with Israel and Germany – MARE, during which the AstroRad radiation vest developed by the Israeli company StemRad, with the support of the Israel Space Agency at the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, will be tested .