Here's how the Artemis II astronauts prepared for their historic trip around the Moon

The Artemis II crew, comprising NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will soon leave Earth and fly around the Moon. As the towering SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft wait silently at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, here's a look at what the astronauts learned during their training, which began in June 2023.

They studied the spacecraft systems, which consist of 300,000 components, well enough to deal with and adapt to unpredictable changes because the mission offers no option to be back on Earth within hours. “Training for Artemis II is all risk mitigation. By preparing the astronauts and flight controllers for what they might encounter, we enable mission success,” said Jacki Mahaffey, NASA’s Artemis II Chief Training Officer, in a statement. 

At the outset, experts at NASA trained the crew about how the Orion and SLS systems function individually and together. Gradually, they were informed about on-orbit operations to more complex parts of the mission, such as ascent, entry, and landing. Besides, they were familiarized with how to exercise to prevent bone loss, wear spacesuits, and perform onboard medical operations and other must-do activities of daily life in microgravity. 

By the time the astronauts reach the farthest point of their trip, they will be nearly 250,000 miles away from Earth. From the crew’s location, the Moon will look like a basketball held at arm’s length, providing a unique opportunity to photograph it. For this, the training program included a session that taught the crew how to observe and capture images of its craters, surface color variations, and reflectivity.

The astronauts also trained in T-38 jet aircraft at Johnson’s Ellington Field. This not only exposed them to great speeds but also increased their capacity for tolerating high workloads and dynamic flight conditions. Lessons learned in the training may prove to be useful when making decisions under pressure in spaceflight. At Johnson, the Orion Mission Simulator recreates Artemis II mission situations to teach astronauts how to detect failures and make decisions with delayed communication from Earth. Apart from this, they learned how to run onboard displays and do procedures that are required to fly and monitor the spacecraft. 

Although they will not land on the Moon, their spacecraft will fly between 4000 and 6000 miles above the lunar surface, allowing them to gather information about lunar craters and variations in color and reflectivity, as mentioned earlier. Besides poring over the basics of geology, the crew spent time on field trips on Earth to understand how to decode lunar geological features.

One of the essential segments of the training is to know about the Orion Crew Survival System. It is a bright orange spacesuit that protects the astronauts during launch and entry. It has a lighter and stronger helmet that comes in more than one size and helps reduce noise and aids communications between the crew and the mission control seamlessly. The suit comes with touch-screen-savvy gloves and boots that allow the crew to move nimbly. It can keep astronauts alive for six days by providing oxygen and maintaining pressure if Orion were to lose cabin pressure on its way to the Moon or on the way back home.

The suit contains a personal locator beacon, a rescue knife, a mirror, a strobe light, a flashlight, a whistle, and light sticks. Such features will be useful if they are to exit Orion after splashdown before recovery personnel arrive. Currently, the crew is in quarantine, with the wet dress rehearsal well underway. It's only a matter of time before history is made yet again. 

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