A history-making space mission is well under way with NASA's Artemis II spacecraft venturing towards the far side of the Moon. Artemis launched to great fanfare on Wednesday. The 10-day odyssey will take its four astronauts farther away from Earth than humans have ever been. Despite the enormous technical demands of the mission, the crew has also been dogged by email problems. Astronaut Reid Wiseman relayed the problem to Mission Control in Texas. He said: "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those is working. Reboot it and check our software and those two Outlooks." NASA reloaded Outlook's files to correct a configuration issue.
Artemis II is the first crewed mission to go beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. It will travel a record-breaking 406,773 km from Earth and 7,600 km beyond the Moon. It is the beginning of NASA's aim to return humans to the Moon and eventually establish a long-term presence there. The astronauts are engaged in a full-scale test for future Moon landings. The crew will test life support systems, communications, navigation, and deep-space operations. Hopefully, the Outlook problem will be a one-off blip. NASA hopes the current mission will pave the way for Artemis IV to land on the lunar surface. The USA hopes a moon landing will take place in 2028.
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Discussion
1) What do you think of space travel?
2) What do you think the Artemis II mission will teach us?
3) What would you like to know about the Moon?
4) What do you think being an astronaut is like?
5) How would you cope with being in space for 10 days?
6) What email problems do you regularly encounter?
7) What is the best email client?
8) How would you feel looking at Earth from space?
