Artemis II is halfway to the Moon

In fact, this also ensured the return home: the orbit in which the spacecraft is placed will also allow the return journey: Orion will in fact go around the Moon, receive a kind of whiplash from it due to the Moon's own gravitation, and will then head towards the return trajectory, without needing anything else.

On this third day, since everything has been checked and adjusted, the astronauts can finally relax, which doesn't mean less work, on the contrary, it means dedicating themselves to health-oriented activities, such as the cardiopulmonary resuscitation test, and the assembly of a curious mechanism, a sort of very compact rowing machine, important for maintaining muscle tone, put to the test by the lack of gravity, which for the human body is a subtle but insidious poison.

Il volano per fare ginnastica, praticamente un vogatore

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch from NASA and Jeremy Hansen from Canada then spent the day practising deep space survival techniques.

They have already given us a nice present, sending us two exciting photos of our Earth, one with the entire planet, in which even two auroras can be glimpsed at the Poles, and a very impressive one of the Earth seen from a porthole of the spacecraft. On 6 April, they will send us those of the Moon.

The astronauts spent some time storing at least 7 litres of water from their on-board tanks in plastic bags as a precaution after a valve had stuck during take-off, they wanted to make sure there was a supply of water available in case another valve had problems. All sorted.

Soon the Deep Space Network will be used by Orion for communications, and let us remember that Italy's Telespazio is also providing its large antennas for mission tracking, while, still on the subject of what Italy is doing, on-board electricity is provided by solar panels supplied by Leonardo, while Thales Alenia Space, another Leonardo subsidiary, is participating in the mission within the sophisticated European Service Module, which follows the Orion capsule and provides all the vital services for humans, including oxygen.

There was a press conference, apparently the first of a series, and preparations were made for Easter lunch, even up there, tradition must be respected.