Miami –  The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, highlighted on Monday the country’s leadership in the field of space exploration and recalled that the Artemis program “aims that humans can live and work on the Moon”, as well as set their sights on the planet Mars as the next step.

The vice president traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), to witness the takeoff of the Artemis I mission, scheduled for Monday morning and which had to be suspended at the last minute until further notice due to failures in one of the powerful SLS rocket engines.

“What happened today was a test. It was a test of pure innovation, inspired by the possibilities of what we know can be, and the leadership of the United States in all of that,” Harris told reporters at the Space Center. Kennedy.

Vice President Harris

Vice President Harris

“We have and continue to be a leader,” she emphasized, after highlighting the innovations of the US space program in the last 50 years; that is, since the US planted “a flag on the Moon” thanks to the Apollo program.

The vice president also highlighted that “the return on an investment for space exploration and being able to put human beings on the Moon where they can work and live will be immense.”

During her visit to the Kennedy Center facilities, the vice president had the opportunity to observe the assembly of the capsules to be used in the Artemis II missions, which will make a manned trip to the Moon, and III, which will place the first crew in over 50 years.

“The technology is extraordinary,” she revealed about the capsules she observed during her visit, in which she also had a brief encounter with astronauts Randy Bresnik and Jessica Meir, as well as a group of students.

He also highlighted that the Artemis III mission will include in its crew the first woman and person of color to travel to the Moon, given that this will provide a “diversity of thought” that will offer a better result in the scientific investigations that are developed in space.

NASA suspended the launch of the historic unmanned mission Artemis I on Monday due to a failure in one of the four RS-25 engines of the powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, which with the Orion capsule in loft was to have taken off on a six-week mission to circle the Moon and return to Earth.

NASA engineers do not rule out that the mission can take off on the next available date, next Friday, but it will depend on what the analyzes show in the next 24 or 48 hours, the directors of Artemis I said in a teleconference.

The goal of the mission is to test the capabilities of the powerful 98-meter-high SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which can carry four astronauts.

Categorized in: