Recently NASA has sent out their Artemis II team and mission but it may have left many people to wonder why we are going to the moon again now. Astronauts haven’t left lower earth orbit since 1972.
The Artemis II mission is the follow up to the unmanned Artemis I that went to the moon to prove that their rockets could get there. Artemis II is a mission where a group of 4 astronauts are going around the moon in an orbit in order to make sure that future landing missions can be successful. The mission is lasting 10 days and is quite important for imaging and mapping out the dark side of the moon that cannot be seen from earth at any point because of the moon’s rotation matching its orbit.
Over the next few decades, NASA is planning to continue going back to the moon for future missions that will be more and more revolutionary. The first main goal is to land on the moon and that will happen a few times and will mostly work to find out what raw materials are present on the moon. More Artemis missions will take place and will start the Gateway program. The goal of this program is to develop a permanent station and base-camp on the moon where people will be able to live and conduct research. Toyota is working on a special program to build the Lunar Cruiser that will be a car-like structure that can traverse the lunar surface and act as an apartment and research station to reach new parts of the moon that cannot be landed on.
All of these missions for a base camp beg the question of why we would do all of this. NASA has made a point in eventually going to mars but with the journey potentially taking years, a base would need to be built on the planet. This lunar mission is not only good for having research on the moon but can also allow for a practice run on building interplanetary settlements. There is also the prospect of harvesting raw materials from the moon that are depleting on the earth. They are looking for materials like graphene that could significantly help make electronics and construction materials. The International Space Station will be unmanned and forced to crash into the ocean around 2030 which means that a lot of countries will not have the same opportunity to research in space which could be a reason for having researchers on the moon.
NASA has done a lot to reach this Artemis program point that a lot of people within do not agree with. For many years NASA has been doing things to satisfy many people but that has not worked too well because they have not achieved as much as they can. They have decided to put all of their effort on this program to achieve more but also narrow their research focus.
China plans to land on the moon in 2030 which will start the newer and more modern space race between them and the United States. They will start to compete to also build a base on the moon. One can assume that with this space race, like with the last one, amazing achievements and technologies will come from it.
