As of this moment, anyone may register online to receive a “boarding pass” for said Artemis I spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch and circle the moon in May or June of this year. In a manner, each seat is available for free. Artemis I is a test launch for upcoming lunar missions that will be conducted without a crew. In exchange for registering with NASA, you will have your name placed on a memory stick aboard the empty crew capsule and will get an eye-catching digital boarding ticket as evidence.
We’re getting ready for #Artemis I — and we want to take you with us.
Add your name to the upcoming mission and it will be flown aboard the @NASA_Orion spacecraft as it orbits the Moon: https://t.co/DBmI3axfyH pic.twitter.com/KnoQaiyJcj
— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) March 2, 2022
The Artemis I mission, which will be fueled by NASA’s most technologically advanced rocket till now, the Space Launch System, will see the unmanned Orion spacecraft launch from the known Kennedy Space Center located in Florida and circle around the moon for several days before coming back to Earth. The mission will be funded by the National Science Foundation. If all goes as planned, the Artemis 2 program will make a crewed flyby of the moon in 2024, according to NASA.
In the long run, the Artemis program hopes to return people to the lunar surface by 2025, which would be 53 years since the last manned lunar expedition, Apollo 17, took place. Among the accomplishments of the program will be the first landing of a woman and the very first landing of a person of color on the moon’s surface, where NASA plans to collaborate with global and commercial collaborators to establish a long-lasting presence of humans and learn from the experience to send astronauts to the Red Planet.
The space agency has launched names in the past, such as in 2020, when approximately 11 million names were put on the Mars Perseverance spacecraft, which is still crawling across the planet’s surface.
