More than fifty years ago, the last man left the moon. On Monday afternoon, the American space agency NASA will start its long-awaited return. It is a mission that not only looks ahead, but also emphatically weighs the past.
‘WE ARE GOING!’, let’s go. That message, printed in capital letters on a large banner attached to the fence around Launch Pad 39B in Florida, is very encouraging. Here, at this location with its evocative space history of Apollo moon missions and Space Shuttle launches, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket towers above it all. As high as the Martinitoren in Groningen, the rocket is waiting for its departure to the moon, Monday afternoon just after half past three Dutch time.
The launch marks the start of the Artemis missions, named after the twin sister of the mythological Apollo. The missions should include putting the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface.
It’s not that far yet. Artemis 1 is the ultimate stress test, the first hurdle to overcome the most ambitious NASA mission in half a century. A journey that therefore still takes place without people on board, while the new mega rocket and the crew capsule Orion actually fly around the moon.
It must be the absolute pinnacle of a space travel year in which it is already crazy busy around the moon. In June, NASA’s Capstone mission, a modest test mission for later Artemis operations, kicked off. And earlier this month, the South Korean probe Danuri (“enjoy the moon”) headed toward our cosmic companion. In addition, about ten more missions will be in the books in the coming period, from various companies and from countries such as Russia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and (beginning 2023) India.
muscle show
The fact that the moon is so much in the spotlight is scientifically motivated only to a small extent. In the end, these kinds of complex space missions are mainly a question of technological muscle. Just as the rocket fires of NASA’s lunar missions in the 1960s and 1970s were mainly fueled by the tensions of the Cold War, now several countries vie for the kind of prestige you can only achieve in the harsh conditions of space. acquire.
For example, China has been engaged in an exceptionally successful series of unmanned moon missions for several years now. And although those involved prefer not to speak of a new space race, and especially emphasize that they want to do research and a new generation (the ‘Artemis generation’, they say at NASA) wants to inspire, the individual plans do compete.
China’s space plans are also expected to culminate this decade in the most imaginative result: people on the moon. Both China and the US are also aiming for landing locations around the lunar south pole. Both are also working with their partners (including Europe for the US and Russia for China) on a manned moon station. It is therefore obvious that the United States – and its Western partners – also hope to outrun the main geopolitical competitor with Artemis.
Bygone space age
At the same time, on Monday’s departure, the roar of the SLS engines does not only reflect that future battle for prestige. The rocket also emphatically bears the past. After all, Artemis consciously mirrors the most important success story in Western space history. The mission should take us back to the grainy television footage of Neil Armstrong’s 1969 ‘one small step’, a feat that taught generations after the Apollo missions that nothing is impossible if you really want to.
It also fuels the hope that the Apollo era that the universe is now really at our feet. At the time, many hoped that we were on the brink of a better, more optimistic time of technological and scientific advancement. Perhaps Gene Cernan, the lesser-known last man on the moon, put it best when he left the moon in December 1972. “Now that we leave the moon, we will go as we came and as God willing we shall return. With peace and hope to all mankind,” he said at the time.
It took a while, but we’re getting there. That’s the message you might recognize in the banner at platform 39B in Florida.
At the same time, the SLS rocket itself feeds the memory of a bygone space age in several ways. After the declining public interest that followed the first man-on-the-moon successes for years lacked the political will to pay the high bills for this kind of spaceflight. For example, a launch of the new SLS costs an estimated staggering $2 billion at a time.
It is therefore probably the last time NASA has designed such a huge and expensive rocket, a final step towards a new era in which commercial space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Boeing are taking over the cosmic transport tasks for good. They are already doing this by launching satellites and transporting astronauts to the four hundred kilometers altitude of the International Space Station, but they also want to do that a rough thousand times further: the 384 thousand kilometers to the moon.
SpaceX is in any case already actively working on the development of its Starship, which should already play a role in the later Artemis missions and with which the company ultimately wants to transport people to Mars. Once it is ready for use, the expensive SLS may become obsolete. Until then, however, with the SLS, the space agency can independently develop its plans for human activities far beyond our atmosphere, in the certainty that it has at least its own heavy rocket at its disposal.
That was not the case for decades. With the end of the Apollo missions, the routine and the necessary technical know-how for distant manned space travel were also lost. The designs of the original Saturn V rockets disappeared in a drawer, engineers retired, and several subcontractors quit. In the end, even NASA, the world’s most successful space agency, could no longer take people beyond Earth orbit with the Space Shuttle. The organization lost even that more modest opportunity after it finally put those vehicles in the proverbial mothballs in 2011.
“Compare it to the Concorde. You can’t just build it and let it fly again now,’ said Philippe Berthe, Artemis project coordinator at the European space agency Esa. “Remaking the Saturn V would be a challenge comparable to building the rocket for the first time.”
Multiplanetary species
Former US President George HW Bush announced in 1989 that humanity would be a “multiplanetary species” by 2019, on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. That failed. President Barack Obama’s later wish, expressed in 2010, to transport people to Mars, is also on hold for the time being.
The current SLS missile must break that deadlock. The rocket did not originate from the wish list of NASA’s engineers, but from the budgets of the US Congress. That freed up money in 2010 for the new own heavy rocket. Nasa’s plans, which had to figure out what kind of rocket it should be, changed repeatedly in the years that followed. For example, the SLS transformed from a launcher for missions to asteroids to the Mars rocket desired by Obama, and finally under the Trump administration – five years later than planned and billions of dollars over budget – it will be given its final destination as a rocket for the Artemis missions.
At least: if Artemis 1 goes as planned. Because that’s just as exciting. Now that the SLS rocket is ready on platform 39B, thoughts turn to the two times that wet dress rehearsals took place, technological tests without launch, in which fuel is pumped into the rocket. Both times, in April and June of this year, it had to be canceled prematurely due to technical problems. In April, several valves did not cooperate, in June there were leaks in hydrogen pipes. NASA thinks it has solved all the problems by now, but we won’t know until Monday afternoon whether that has worked.
New firsts
If the SLS rocket – and the Artemis mission in its wake – passes the first serious exam, the missions will become increasingly complex in the coming years. In addition, NASA, known for its slick PR device, is constantly aiming for new firsts.
Mission Artemis 2, which is expected to leave in May 2024, will soon have the first astronauts flying along. Without landing yet, but that mission will mark the first time in more than fifty years that man has ventured further than a few hundred kilometers above the earth’s surface. In addition, the chosen route will take the astronauts deeper into space than anyone has ever been before. At mission 3, ‘at the earliest’ in 2025, but probably later, the first female footprints follow on the gray moondust. In the run-up to Artemis 1, NASA already announced thirteen potential locations on the lunar south pole for that future landing.
And after that more first times will follow, although they are still in pencil in the agenda. First, the construction of Gateway: the first manned space station in orbit around the moon. In the future, that station may even serve as a departure point for even more ambitious space missions. So that, with proven success and – just as importantly – persistent political will, the sights can then be set on that long-dreamed next scoop: a manned mission to Mars. If successful, we will finally see the first footsteps on another planet. Hopefully with peace and hope for all mankind.
Various footsteps
All twelve astronauts who walked on the moon in the Apollo years were American white men. NASA therefore wants to put together a more diverse team for the Artemis missions. For example, the first new footsteps on the moon must be set by a woman.
Although all NASA astronauts have a chance of a moon trip and partners such as the European ESA (probably only after Artemis 3) will receive a place, NASA has already made a pre-selection of eighteen astronauts that they ‘the Artemis team‘ baptized. Half of them are women.
Many experts expect that the experienced astronaut Stephanie Wilson (55) can take the first new step as a woman and person of color. She has been active at NASA since 1996, flew her first mission in 2004 and went to space a total of three times.