Artemis Astronauts: Stunt Or Opportunity?
WRT the #Artemis Astronaut announcement: if you think its a stunt: it can be changed with an email. If you think @NASA needs to work harder: remember: Artemis III will likely be underway 4 years from TODAY. One way or the other it is time to get serious. No more negative progress pic.twitter.com/te6AtsOisf
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 9, 2020
NASA Names Artemis Team of Astronauts Eligible for Early Moon Missions
“Joseph Acaba, Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, Matthew Dominick, Victor Glover (in orbit), Warren Hoburg, Jonny Kim, Christina Koch, Kjell Lindgren, Nicole Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, Jasmin Moghbeli, Kate Rubins (in orbit), Frank Rubio, Scott Tingle, Jessica Watkins, Stephanie Wilson”
Few people believe that Artemis 3 is going to be in progress in 2024 (any time) but if it was – many crews have been named over 4 years before flight especially for the early Shuttle flights.
2028 is more likely.
Eight years for an astronaut’s next flight (or first flight) is a long time. But it’s not unprecedented.
As Keith said, it’s time to start training and preparing teams to actually GO. And it was NASA — the Artemis program, JSC, the Crew Office – that made these selections, not Bridenstine, not Pence, and certainly not Trump. Hopefully with real faces, Congress will sharpen their pencils and find more money for HLS.
Well, that answers my question from an earlier thread. The list of Artemis candidate astronauts includes two geologists, Jessica Watkins (PhD, Stanford) and Joseph Acabá (MS, U. Arizona.) Although Dr. Watkins seems like more of a remote sensing and Mars rover type, rather than a field geologist, and I suspect Mr. Acabá experience in hydrology won’t be of much use on the Moon. But, regardless of those details, if either of them are assigned to the Artemis III landing, that’s much better than I’d feared.
I’m glad to read the names on the list. I seriously worried the astronauts would be culled based on their their political views.
Right now about all any of these candidates can hope for is probably a circum-lunar flight. I’d guess that might Include 10 or 12. On NASAs/Artemis schedule, I don’t foresee any of them making landings. Those won’t occur for 20 years on their current schedules-sometime after 2040. That is if the program is not outright killed by the next Administration. Now if Elon Musk is successful, I could foresee some making circum-lunar flights on a Starship much sooner. Landings are still a problem because unless someone with ‘pull’ like space force, gets behind it, I do not foresee a lander in less than 20 years-2040-not based on the schedules NASA and its contractors have achieved in the last several programs.