The Colombian Vice President, Francia Márquezwill attend NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Caño Cañaveral, Florida (USA), at the launch of the space mission Artemis I, which aims to reach the Moon.
This is the first international trip for Márquez, who is already in Florida, since she became vice president and it is a commitment to work to “promote and strengthen the generation of scientific, technological and space knowledge in the country,” explained the Vice Presidency it’s a statement.
Artemis I is a space program, they explained, that seeks to return humans to the Moon by 2025.including a woman on the crew, and with which Colombia is indirectly involved through a cooperation agreement signed last May with NASA to “promote the exchange of engineers, students, and researchers,” as well as to “participate in programs of Nasa Aerospace Medicine, outreach activities, among others”.
“Colombia wants to be a power of life and science, and aerospace technology is essential to achieve it. We are signatories of the Nasa Artemis agreements, which will take the first woman to the Moon”stressed Márquez, quoted in the statement.
Artemis I, which will take over from the Apollo program, whose last mission occurred in 1972 and is the last time that the human being stepped on the lunar surface, includes 9 missions led by NASA, and will begin with an initial one this Monday in which will launch the powerful SLS rocket and the Orion capsule.
If all goes as planned, at 8:33 a.m. local time (12:33 GMT), the rocket will be launched from platform 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and the mission Artemis I will begin a six-week journey, in which it will reach more than 450,000 kilometers away from Earth before embarking on a loop that will culminate in the Pacific Ocean.
This program, which takes the name of the twin sister of the God Apollo, will send its first manned mission, Artemis II, in 2024, which will make the same journey as its predecessor covers from Monday. And it is expected that with Artemis III, in 2025, the earth’s satellite will already touch down, and it will also be the first woman and the first man of color to travel to the Moon.
Márquez will share this launch with other authorities, such as the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, as well as celebrities such as actors Jack Black and Chris Evans, for the launch of this mission that marks the starting signal for the Artemis programme, with the that NASA opens a new chapter in space exploration marked by the establishment of a lunar base and the sending of a crew to Mars.
EFE
