The United States’ civil house company NASA has introduced plans to launch a crewed mission across the moon in April subsequent yr, though it might probably come as early as February.
The 10-day mission involving 4 astronauts is a part of NASA’s Artemis program, the flagship US effort to return people to the moon as early as 2027.
“This flight is another step toward crewed missions to the lunar surface and helping the agency prepare for future astronaut missions to Mars,” NASA stated in a press release.
The crew — comprised of three US astronauts and one Canadian — would turn into the primary to orbit the moon in additional than half a century.
“We together have a front-row seat to history: We’re returning to the moon after over 50 years,” NASA performing deputy affiliate administrator Lakiesha Hawkins stated at a information convention on Tuesday.
The Artemis 2 crew includes of astronauts (from proper to left) Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander who final flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station in 2014; Victor Glover, the pilot who flew to house in 2020 on a SpaceX ISS mission; Christina Koch, a mission specialist who flew on a Soyuz ISS mission in 2019; and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, one other mission specialist who will fly to house for the primary time. Source: Getty / Austin DeSisto / NurPhoto
The Artemis 2 mission follows an uncrewed mission that put a spacecraft into lunar orbit in November 2022 and returned it to Earth roughly 4 weeks later.
Multiple setbacks have delayed Artemis 2 however Hawkins says NASA intends to maintain the dedication of an early 2026 launch.
According to NASA, the Artemis undertaking’s objectives are to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”.
A ‘free experience’ and a ‘slingshot’
Richard de Grijs from Macquarie University’s Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre likened the Artemis 2 mission to “a test drive of a new car”.
“This is a test drive of a new spacecraft that’s meant to bring humans back to the moon. But this is the first time, so they’ll do a fly-around rather than a landing,” he informed SBS News.
“They will go up into orbit, they’ll circle the Earth once, and then — if everything goes well, because tests will be done, of course, during that orbital journey — they’ll set course for the moon.”
“This is done in such a way that they’ll use, in essence, the moon’s gravity to get a free ride back — just in case anything happens,” he stated.
Workers transport the 64m tall SLS core stage for the Artemis II moon rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July final yr. Source: Getty / Paul Hennessy / Anadolu
“So it’s a full circle around the earth, and then a slingshot around the moon back to the Earth.”
Lead Artemis 2 flight director Jeff Radigan has stated that the mission will take the crew at the least 9,000km previous the moon.
“So, the moon’s going to look a little bit smaller,” he stated.
NASA has stated, ought to the mission go based on plan, the Artemis 2 spacecraft will land within the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
‘The Apollo program for our period’
The final time people landed on the moon was December 1972 — the ultimate mission of NASA’s Apollo program, a collection of house flights undertaken by NASA between 1961 and 1972.
It was the sixth time people had set foot on the moon, with the primary human moon touchdown being that of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in July 1969.
“[Artemis] is the Apollo program for our era. That’s how you could characterise it. It’s a big, bold thing,” de Grijs stated.
“They want to bring people back to the Moon, not just for three years as they did during the Apollo era, but for a more sustainable presence.”
Jonti Horner, an astronomer primarily based on the University of Southern Queensland, characterised a everlasting human presence on the moon as “a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system”.
“One of the goals is this idea of having a permanent presence at the [moon’s] South Pole, having a station in orbit, and also using it as a place where we can then build to go out to Mars or to go to the asteroids or wherever we choose to go,” he stated.
Horner stated this system was prone to have “a huge amount of benefit” to science.
“I think once we can get people to the moon, or to Mars down the line, that will open up huge avenues for exploration because it’s a lot easier if you are there in person to walk around and go: ‘That looks interesting. I’ll go look at that’.”
“You’d learn more about Mars by sending a geologist there with a hammer and giving them one hour than we’ve learned from all the years of robotic spacecraft going there.”
De Grijs stated one of many key scientific advantages can be the flexibility to analyse giant quantities of lunar soil.
“At the moment, we’ve had a few sample return missions, most recently by the Chinese. But what they bring back is a relatively small volume of material, often no more than one or two kilograms of regolith, which is the lunar soil,” he stated.
A 3.2-billion-year-old rock of sintered lunar soil collected by Apollo 15 inside a pressurised nitrogen-filled case. Source: AP / Michael Wyke
“With humans there, you could look at larger volumes, and particularly what’s of interest for scientists is ‘where does the moon come from?’.
“And so, relying on the place you might be on the moon, completely different soil samples, regolith samples, will be capable to inform you much more concerning the origin of the moon. And so you could pattern rather more than only a few kilos right here and there.”
According to NASA, “a number of theories about our moon’s formation vie for dominance” but nearly all agree that the moon “was born out of destruction” — most likely an object or series of objects crashing into the Earth and flinging molten and vaporised debris into space around 4.5 billion years ago.
‘Some very difficult conversations’
De Grijs said that, while scientific progress was definitely a key motivator of the Artemis program, “in the long run, it is also about assets”.
Mining of mineral resources was “undoubtedly on the horizon”, he said, but water was likely to be the first resource extracted.
“Over the final couple of years, there was numerous curiosity within the southern hemisphere of the moon, significantly south of the moon’s polar circle, the place there is likely to be frozen water that might probably be used for assets for extra everlasting settlement and even as a reservoir for additional journey into the photo voltaic system,” he said.
Horner said this water could be “actually helpful” to provide fuel for rocket launches.
“If you possibly can extract that from the south pole of the moon, launch it to the station orbiting the moon … you need to use that to gasoline all of your missions and save some huge cash.”
However, Horner expects extraction of moon resources to trigger “discussions within the many years to return concerning the stability between our business use of the moon and what individuals on the bottom see once they lookup”.
“For completely different cultures world wide, the moon may be very sacred,” he said.
“And so there’s going to be some very troublesome conversations and hopefully some actually good understanding reached, to make sure that we get the perfect for everyone with a minimal hurt.”
A new space race?
China also has a space program that’s targeting 2030 at the latest for its first crewed mission to the moon and also plans to eventually establish a base on the moon.
US President Donald Trump, who announced the Artemis program during his first term, wants the US space agency to return to the moon as soon as possible and, during his second term, his administration has piled pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress.
The Trump administration has referred to a “second house race,” a successor to the 20th-century Cold War competition over spaceflight technology between the US and the Soviet Union.
“There’s undoubtedly a way of competitors there, and that executed rightly just isn’t truly essentially a foul factor,” Horner said.
“It could be a actual driver of technological growth and of pushing the boundaries to what we will do,” he added.
“I’d a lot somewhat nations be exploring as a method of exhibiting their would possibly somewhat than flexing their army muscle groups.”
De Grijs, who is also executive director of the International Space Science Institute–Beijing, says that it may be “seen as an area race from the US facet”, but that’s not a feelingshared by China.
A Yaogan-45 satellite tv for pc blasts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, China, on 9 September. Source: AAP / Yang Guanyu / EPA
“Many individuals within the West, significantly, say: ‘this can be a new house race with China’, and that is the way it’s characterised, however I truly disagree with that evaluation,” he told SBS News.
“[The Chinese] work on a five-year schedule. They have five-year plans, and each five-year plan, they’ve sure issues they need to obtain, and so they go slowly however steadily, and so they construct up their experience and their innovation.
“The Chinese have a plan to also go to the moon, but I don’t think they’re going to be rushed by what the Americans are doing.”
