anyway NASA You may have trouble getting back to the moon By 2024, the US space agency will eventually do its best to explore the surface of the Moon, announcing a formal partnership with Japan for the Lunar Gateway.
NASA and the Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) have officially announced the agreement that will see JAXA contribute to the portal, providing technical expertise, life support devices, environmental control system, batteries, thermal control, and image components.
“We are honored to announce this latest agreement with Japan to support long-term human exploration around and around the moon as part of the Artemis program,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. statement. “The strengthening of our international partnerships and our commitments to Artemis puts humanity on a solid path to achieving our shared goals of sustainable exploration of the moon by the end of this decade.”
Illustration of a gateway in lunar orbit with contributions from international partners. (NASA)
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The Japanese Foreign Ministry said earlier that a memorandum of understanding was signed between NASA and Japan at the end of 2020.
In addition, the new agreement will provide opportunities for Japanese astronauts to access the portal, which NASA said “will be determined after additional discussions and documented in a future arrangement.”
“Leveraging the capabilities that international partners contribute to the portal will be key to enabling access to the lunar surface,” added Cathy Louders, Assistant Director of the Human Exploration and Operations Department at NASA Headquarters. “We are excited to proceed with these pioneering efforts with Japan and our other partners.”
The gate, which is one-sixth the size of the International Space Station, will serve as a “meeting point” for astronauts traveling into lunar orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft before they make their way to low lunar orbit and, ultimately, the surface-outlook. It will be used for both robotic and human missions to both the moon and Mars.
“The capabilities provided by Japan are essential to enable the internal environment of the gate to allow our crews to live and work for longer periods,” said Dan Hartman, Gateway Program Director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “With life support systems from Japan, the long-term assignments of Artemis crews can be accomplished as the demand for logistical resupply decreases.”
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Japan has become the third international partner to commit to the portal. In October 2020, NASA and the European Space Agency signed an agreement to collaborate on the portal. One month later, the United States and Canada signed an agreement to cooperate in the lunar focus as well.
The portal will be used as a base for NASA’s Artemis moon exploration program. In 2019, NASA reveal Her vision of the Artemis lunar lander that will return American astronauts to the surface of the moon.
The Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo program, is noteworthy for a number of reasons, including its goals of sending the first woman to land on the moon and creating a sustainable human presence on Earth’s natural satellite.
So far, only 12 people, all of them Americans, have landed on the moon. The last NASA astronaut to set foot on the moon was Apollo 17 mission commander Gene Cernan on December 14, 1972.
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