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More than half a century after astronauts last left footprints on the moon, humanity is preparing to return to the moon. Once upon a time, the excitement surrounding NASA’s Apollo program captivated the world, and now NASA hopes to rekindle the same sense of wonder with its newest lunar effort, the Artemis program.
NASA’s Artemis II launch Scheduled for the first week of April. This will be the first human mission to the Moon since 1972, and should be a breakthrough for the Artemis program. Now, NASA has released a new tool that allows the public to track Artemis II in real time.
The Artemis program is NASA’s long-term effort to return humans to the Moon and establish a sustainable presence there for the first time since the Apollo program. The program aims to land astronauts near the Moon’s south pole, develop new technologies for long-term exploration and use the Moon as a starting point for future missions to Mars.
The Artemis Real-time Orbit website, called AROW, is already available For the public, though there’s not much to see since the launch is still a few weeks away. It is also available directly from NASA application If you are using a mobile device. The website allows the public to visualize data collected by sensors on Orion and sent to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The site is easy to navigate. You’ll see a visual representation of Artemis II’s progress, including its speed, its distance from Earth, and its distance from the Moon. Mobile app users get all of the above, plus an additional augmented reality tracker that lets you point your phone at the sky and see where the Artemis II is relative to your location on Earth. It works a lot like Google Star Map and Other stargazing apps Which uses similar technology.
According to NASA, tracking will be available once the Orion capsule separates from the rocket’s upper stage, which is expected about 3 hours after the next launch in April. The site will then update its information in real time throughout the 10-day mission.
NASA is also preparing flight data Available for download So people interested in creating their own content, such as visuals or tracking apps, can do so. The data will include all sorts of things, including state vectors, which are data that “precisely describe where Orion is and how it is moving.” The same data will be used by NASA to study Orion and make improvements to it Future Artemis missions.
No specific launch date for Artemis II has been set, but the agency plans to launch the mission no later than April 1. Originally scheduled for FebruaryBut it was postponed several times due to hydrogen leakage and helium flow problem. NASA says it has since fixed both issues.