history-making space mission is well under way with NASA's Artemis II spacecraft venturing towards far side of Moon. Artemis launched to great fanfare on Wednesday. 10-day odyssey will take its four astronauts farther away from Earth than humans have ever been. Despite enormous technical demands of mission, the crew has also been dogged by email problems. Astronaut Reid Wiseman relayed 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 configuration issue.
Artemis II is first crewed mission to go beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. It will travel record-breaking 406,773 km from Earth and 7,600 km beyond Moon. It is beginning of NASA's aim to return humans to the Moon and eventually establish long-term presence there. The astronauts are engaged in full-scale test for future Moon landings. The crew will test life support systems, communications, navigation, and deep-space operations. Hopefully, Outlook problem will be one-off blip. NASA hopes current mission will pave the way for Artemis IV to land on the lunar surface. The USA hopes moon landing will take place in 2028.
