The Wildcat

          NASA, we all have heard of them. But if you haven't, I’ll give you a quick explanation. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It's a U.S. government agency responsible for space exploration, aeronautics research, and Earth and space science. But what I’m going to be talking about is one of their missions called Artemis ll. 

          Artemis ll is the second  mission to take place for the Artemis program. The first one was on November 16, 2022. This next one is going to take place in April 2026. It would last about ten days. Artemis ll is the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program. The whole point of the mission is to test several systems like life support under actual deep-space conditions. They're also going to test the measurements of the radiation levels both inside and outside of the spacecraft to better understand the deep-space environment. 

          NASA is going to do a lunar flyby, not a landing. So the crew will go around the moon and come back. While they're doing the flyby, the crew is going to take pictures of the moon’s surface particularly from the far side to study its geology. The four people that are actually going to be on the ship are: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christian Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Some risks and challenges the crew and others can face are accidentally staying longer than expected or reliability for the hardware. 

          I asked my peers several questions: "Why do you think space travel is important?”, “What do you think is interesting about space?” And "How do you think using space travel can help us in the future ?” Let's see what they say. 

For my first question, Jayden Salazar (8th grade) said, “I think space travel is important because it helps us discover the mystery of space.” Student Alexia Duran (8th grade) said, “ I think space travel is important because we are able to explore space and find out more information about other planets.” Finally, Jocelyn Diaz (8th grade) said, “We can learn more about our galaxy and how it works, and future generations can discover stuff we can't now.” 

For the second question,. Jayden said, “What's so interesting about space is there's a lot of mysteries about space, like how black holes are still kind of a mystery.” Alexia said, “I think that only exploring 5% of space is interesting, and there is so much more that we don't know about it.” Jocelyn said, “What I find interesting is how far it goes and if it ends.” 

Then I asked the last question. Jayden said, “It can help by protecting us and making different discoveries." Alexia said, “I think it can help us by helping human survival and improving our understanding of the universe and help address global challenges like climate change.” And lastly Jocelyn said, “It can help by being able to find out about the galaxy and what's going on about Earth.”