In January this year NASA announced it would target its first crewed mission using the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. The target date for Artemis II’s historic crewed trip around the Moon is September 2025.
Building on the uncrewed Artemis I mission’s success in 2022, Artemis II will launch from Kennedy Space Center for what should be a seven-day journey. The mission will feature four astronauts: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch, all of NASA, along with Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian Space Agency’s Mission Specialist. The quartet will orbit the Moon for several days aboard Artemis II before returning to Earth, landing in the Pacific.
And where do gases come into this? Well, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and helium – these gases, and their liquefied forms of storage and handling – are in many respects the backbone for the entire space enterprise. Space missions are not possible without them.
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