Ever have one of those nightmares where you forget your pencil, or some key item, before a big test?
Astronauts flying to the moon face that situation in spades: Once everything is on the spacecraft and they’re on the way, there’s no way to add to or change anything on the Orion spacecraft. So the Artemis 2 crew practiced a “day in the life” of their moon mission, expected to fly there in 2025, to see if there were any little items they may have forgotten.
The astronaut quartet literally spent the day in an Orion mockup at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and included mission backup astronaut Jenni Gibbons from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) as well. Physical space was at a premium. Gravity made things harder as people clambered around each other to get their tasks done.
But it was valuable practice, as three of the Artemis 2 crew told Space.com at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in early May prior to a launch attempt here for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
“One of the things that we’ve wanted to do as a crew is to start getting everything together that’s going to be in the vehicle and start looking at how we’re going to manage it,” Jeremy Hansen, a mission specialist with CSA, said in staff office at KSC’s press center. (His crew members say the simulation was his idea, although Hansen didn’t take credit.)
“The training team did a great job,” Hansen added. “They set up a day-long simulation, where we went through all of the activities in Day 1 of the of the launch profile. We didn’t simulate launch. But once we got to orbit, we simulated getting things out, making sure the water system is working, setting up the toilet, removing the seats, [and asking] where are we going to store the spacesuits? We’re just going through that whole choreography, all the way until we set up our sleeping bags and then go to bed.”
Aside from Hansen, the Artemis 2 astronauts are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth…
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