Rockets launching into space may seem relatively routine at a time when companies and countries are crowding the atmosphere and the wealthy can buy a rocket ticket to the International Space Station. But the uncrewed Artemis I mission is a throwback to the inspiring space program of the past, when space commanded national attention and its exploration was a critical mission. Watch parties are popping up all over the country. Find one in your area. CNN’s Kristin Fisher, Ashley Strickland, Rachel Crane and Eleanor Stubbs contributed to this story, and what follows is taken from their many reports and also from several interviews I saw on CNN over the past few days.
Why is the US going back to the moon?
“We’re going back to the moon preparing to go to Mars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Friday morning on CNN’s “New Day.” “That’s the difference. Fifty years ago we went to the moon for a day, a few hours, three days at most. Now we’re going back to the moon to stay, to live, to learn, to build.” Watch the full interview.
How is this mission different from the Apollo landing mission 50 years ago?
“When we put men on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, we were in something of a struggle for survival — survival of the United States of America against the Soviet Union,” astronaut Stan Love told CNN’s Jim Sciutto and Poppy. Harlow Friday. “We had an existential threat and we were responding to it in a peaceful way, which I think is great, much better than solving this problem with bombs.” This existential threat waned with the Soviet Union and so did funding for the space program, which is now a much smaller part of US spending. More recently, space has been an international endeavor and increasingly commercial.
How incredible is this mission?
The numbers are staggering, according to this interactive from CNN’s Stubbs and Marco Chacón. The two explain why this is a test flight:
Orion will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 mph. It will have to withstand 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, half as hot as the surface of the sun.
“Our number one goal is we want to know that the heat shield will work in the fiery heat of reentry. It’s coming in hot. It’s coming in fast, 32 times the speed of sound, Mach 32,” Nelson told “New Day.”
Should the private sector take over space?
Love argued that we are in the midst of a natural evolution where industry takes over lower Earth orbit and the US government looks further afield. “We’re kind of handing over low Earth orbit to industry and we’re going to the moon and one day we’re going to hand the moon over to industry,” he said.
There’s also a new space race going on
Instead of the Soviet Union, the US is now in a space race with China, Nelson said. “We should be very concerned about China landing on the moon and saying, ‘It’s ours now and stay out,’” Nelson said in July. Fisher has written about “the dueling efforts of the US and China to build bases on the ice-rich south pole of the Moon in the 2030s.” Read her story. China is now working with Russia and has plans to build a new space station. Twenty nations have signed on to the Artemis mission with the US. “This is not a raw race to plant a flag,” Scott Pace, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, told Fisher. “The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says that space is the province of all mankind. China has the right to explore and use space. I just don’t want them there without us.” (China, the Russian Federation, and the United States are signatories to the treaty.)
Who is winning the current race back to the moon?
Fisher: If the 42-day uncrewed mission around the moon and back is successful, it will keep NASA on track to meet its goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2025. China is targeting 2030 to land the its astronauts, called Taikonauts, on the moon. The Artemis program aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon and eventually deliver astronauts to Mars.
Will there be people in the mission on Monday?
No. But the flight is unprecedented, Strickland writes. “Orion will travel 40,000 miles (64,373 kilometers) past the moon, breaking the record set by Apollo 13, to go farther than any spacecraft intended to carry humans.” Plus, it’s going where humans haven’t gone before, and NASA wants to know how things react in deep space before sending humans. The Orion spacecraft will carry items such as yeast, algae, fungi and seeds instead of a traditional crew. Findings from these experiments are essential to help pave the way for a safe return of humans to the moon and an eventual crewed landing on Mars through future Artemis missions. Also on board will be a mannequin, Commander Moonikin Campos.
This is just a first step
The current goal is to send people to the moon in two years. Assuming all goes according to plan on Monday.
