NASA Selects Alabama Space Center to Manage Lunar Landing Program – AZERTAC

Baku, August 17, AZERTAC

Despite protests from Texas lawmakers, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama will manage the agency's plans for the construction of a lunar landing system that will transport the next man and the first woman on the surface of the moon in 2024, Jim Bridenstine, director of NASA. announced Friday, according to CBS News.

Appropriately, the core program will be run by Lisa Watson-Morgan, a native of Alabama, who graduated from the University of Alabama as an engineer and has been a NASA veteran for three decades.

"The program that will be run here in northern Alabama will land the first woman on the south pole of the moon, and this landing system is run by one of the best engineers in the world. NASA, "said Bridenstine. "And she happens to be a woman, what a great American story for NASA."

Artist's view of a possible lunar lander pattern showing a vehicle uphill carrying a crew of astronauts taking off from the moon's surface.

NASA

Bridenstine has announced this announcement as the basis for a massive test version of the 14-meter high liquid hydrogen tank, which will be used in the first stage of the Space Launch System – SLS – built by Boeing to bring back astronauts at the moon.

The Artemis Moon program is the centerpiece of the Trump administration 's action to return astronauts to the moon' s surface by 2024, four years earlier than NASA originally planned. The Johnson Space Center in Houston manages all aspects of the program with respect to astronauts, crew training, life support systems and mission design.

The Artemis program involves the construction of a small space station called Gateway, consisting of a solar-electric propulsion module connected to a pressurized housing module and a docking port. The modules will be launched on the Moon by commercial rockets and assembled under remote control with the help of autonomous docking systems.

The lunar lander, consisting of three components, will also be launched on commercial rockets and moored at the bridge before the arrival of astronauts. A component, a sort of carrier vehicle known as a transfer vehicle, would drive the Gateway's undercarriage to a lower orbit. From there, the landing module of the landing gear will make a landing on the Moon powered by a rocket, initially carrying two astronauts.

The astronauts would rise to the surface in the pressurized cabin of an upper climbing stage. This step will use the descent module as a launch pad, like the Apollo astronauts 50 years ago, to go back in the transfer vehicle, then in Gateway.