NASA's Artemis II astronaut quarantine begins as Christina Koch isolates for moon mission
It's looking like NASA's Artemis II rocket and its four-person crew are all making good progress toward a planned space launch next week.
The upcoming 10-day manned mission is a pretty big deal, given that it's the first time astronauts will travel around the moon and back again since Apollo 17 in 1972.
According to NASA, Artemis 'will send astronauts to explore the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars'.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has previously said that the mission, which was scheduled to take off in February before a helium leak was detected, would fulfil 'a promise to the American people that we will return to the moon'.
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The four astronauts who will make up the Artemis II mission include NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
In preparation for the launch, which will take place at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Artemis II crew needed to enter a quarantine 'to ensure they stay healthy leading up to launch'.
They went into quarantine last Wednesday (18 March), which saw the astronauts limiting their exposure to others for the following week in Houston, before flying to Kennedy approximately five days before launch, to continue their quarantine from the astronaut crew quarters there.
NASA outlines that 'both activities are key milestones' on the way to a launch as early as next week (1 April).
According to the space agency, the early April launch window includes opportunities through to the following Monday (6 April).
"We choose to isolate the crew for 14 days before a launch because most infectious diseases take 10 to 14 days to be transferred from one person to another," explained Dr Raffi Kuyumjian, the Canadian Space Agency's flight surgeon.
Earlier this week (23 March), Koch took to Instagram to share with her 439k followers exactly what quarantine looked like, and it's far from staying locked up inside a house all day!
She shared a snap of herself taking photos of the night sky, joined by her dog, along with the caption: "Weekend in quarantine vibes."
Explaining a little more about how she's quarantining ahead of the launch date, the astronaut continued: "Two weeks before launch, a crew and the launch team with them keeps to themselves to stay healthy for the mission. During this time, we even train with the group or remotely with others at NASA."
She concluded: "Today it was waking up on a remote beach after camping. Tomorrow it’s back to a simulation of launches and re-entries in Orion!"
Rhiannon Ingle