People will be able to live on the moon this decade, says NASA

Howard Hu, who runs the Orion Moonship programme for the agency, said habitats would be needed to support scientific missions. He said on Sunday that launching the Artemis missile on Wednesday, which carries the Orion space shuttle, was a historical “day for human space flight”.

Orion is currently about 134,000 miles from the moon.

The 100m-long Artemis rocket was launched by the Kennedy Space Centre as part of NASA's mission to turn astronauts into Earth satellite.

In May of the rocket lies the Orion spacecraft, which, for this first mission, is without a crew, but is equipped with a ʹmanekin's which will record the effects of human flight.

Hu said watching Artemis get up was “an incredible feeling” and “a dream”, transmits the telegraph.

The “is the first step we are taking for long-term exploration of deep space, not just for the United States, but for the world”, he said.

And I think this is a historic day for NASA, but it's also a historic day for all people who love human space flight and deep space exploration.

I mean, we're going back to the moon, we're working on a stable program and that's the means that will transport people to the moon again to”.

Hu explained that if the current flight of Artemis was successful, then the other would be with one crew, followed by a third, where astronauts would again land on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, 50 years ago in December 1972.

The current mission was going well, he told the BBC, with all systems operating, and the mission team was preparing for the next combustion of Orion engines (what is known as burning) on Monday to set the space shuttle in a distant orbit of the moon.

One of the most critical stages of Mission Artemis I is the safe return of Orion module to Earth.

It will reenter the planet's atmosphere at 38,000 miles an hour or 32 times the speed of sound and shield at its lower end will undergo temperatures approaching 3,000 degrees C.

Once the security of Artemis' components and systems has been tested and confirmed, Hu said the plan was for people to live on the moon “in this decade”.