PENCE STICKS WITH THE PLAN — MOON IN 2024, THEN MARSBy Marcia Smith | Posted: July 20, 2019 6:11 pm ET | Last Updated: July 20, 2019 6:11 pm ET
Vice President Mike Pence celebrated the Apollo 11 50th anniversary at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) today. While President Trump gives the appearance of wavering on the need to return to the Moon before going to Mars, Pence exhibits no such doubts. He again said American astronauts will walk on the Moon in 2024, what is now called the Artemis program. As he spoke, three new crew members were on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) where they will dock this evening. Knowing they were launching on this historic day, they designed their mission patch to commemorate Apollo 11 and tie it to the present (ISS) and future (Artemis).
At 12:28 pm ET, a trio of international astronauts lifted off in their Soyuz MS-13 capsule from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA’s Drew Morgan, ESA’s Luca Parmitano, and Roscosmos’s Alexander Skvortsov are enroute to the ISS. They will dock at 6:51 pm ET and after about two hours of system and pressurization tests, will open the hatch into their home away from home about 8:50 pm ET.
They participated in designing the crew patch for their “Expedition 60” mission, as the Apollo 11 crew did back in 1969. Though the names of crew members typically are included on these mission patches, the Apollo 11 crew felt strongly that they were representatives of everyone on Earth, not just three Americans, and chose to omit their names. In honor of that legacy, the ISS Expedition 60 crew did the same.
The ISS Expedition 60 and Apollo 11 mission patches. The Expedition 60 patch is described as follows: Three stars with the Moon superimposed forms the letter “L,” the Latin symbol for 50. The Moon is depicted as a waxing crescent, as it was on July 20, 1969. The familiar silhouette of the International Space Station is visible, flying across the night sky. Stars, numerous and bright as seen from the space station, form the shape of an eagle in the same pose as on the iconic patch of the Apollo 11 mission. The sunrise represents the fact that we are still in the dawn of humanity’s exploration of the solar system. The hexagonal shape of the patch represents the space station’s cupola, with the six points of the hexagon symbolizing the six crewmembers of Expedition 60. Just like on the Apollo 11 mission patch, the names and nationalities are deliberately omitted as a way to highlight that space missions — then, now, and in the future — are for Earth and all humankind. Credit: NASA(...)
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Wątek: Sojuz MS-13 (Przeczytany 19647 razy)