It's hard to believe that it's been 50 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Lunar Excursion Module in the Sea of Tranquility, 50 years since Neil Armstrong announced that it was "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"* - 50 years since Apollo 11 opened the door to the universe.
We’ve been slow to go through that door, but as I've commented before, the Apollo moon missions weren't really part of a strategy for sustained exploration, they were markers in a game of political one-upmanship. After the United States had placed their flag on the lunar surface in advance of the USSR, there was actually no need to continue to proceed any further, as evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union never bothered to make a manned Moon landing - that particular marker had been scored, and both sides moved on to another part of the board.
However, as time moved on, tensions eased, and the USSR fell apart, a more thoughtful and scientific approach was taken to the now-defunct space race. The development of orbiting space stations such as Skylab and Mir marked a shift from exploration to experimentation, eventually resulting in the cooperative initiative of the International Space Station. The ISS is essentially a huge experimental platform, but it's also an ongoing investigation into the long term effects of life in zero gravity on the human body, information which will now be invaluable as we once again begin to explore further into the solar system.
The key to NASA's strategy for that exploration is made clear in the Apollo 50th anniversary logo, which features both the Moon and Mars. NASA plans to create a sustainable human presence on the Moon through its Artemis program, followed by manned missions to Mars.
The Artemis program is currently composed of seven missions, starting with unmanned tests of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft next year, followed by a manned lunar flyby and the start of the assembly process for the Gateway lunar space station** in 2022. Once Gateway is complete in 2023, the Human Landing System will be transferred to it in stages by civilian rockets, with a manned lunar landing by Artemis III scheduled for 2024.
The next four Artemis missions will follow the same pattern of using Gateway as a transfer point from Orion to the HLS, and will presumably do the necessary groundwork (literally) to create a permanent sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028. This exploration model will then be repeated for Mars, with a manned landing planned for sometime in the 2030s.
This all sounds very impressive, but it's important to remember that, regardless of international participation, NASA is the primary driving force behind Artemis, and as such, it is at the mercy of government funding and changes in political priorities. As if to drive this point home, much of Artemis is made up of the remnants of cancelled NASA programs - the Orion capsule comes from the Constellation program, which was shut down in 2010 by President Obama, and the Power and Propulsion unit for Gateway is adapted from the Asteroid Redirect mission that was cancelled in 2017.
Hopefully Artemis will not suffer a similar fate, and we actually will see a permanent installation on the Moon, and subsequent missions to Mars. After all, it's been 50 years - isn't it time for another giant leap?
- Sid
* I know, "one small step for man" is how this is normally written, but I honestly think that Armstrong's Ohio accent elides the missing "a" into the end of "for". Try repeating the statement in his voice and you'll see what I mean.
** The Gateway station has drawn some criticism as to whether or not an orbiting lunar platform is necessary, but intermodal stations like this allow for the use of dedicated space craft designed specifically for the role of launch from Earth, zero-g travel from the ISS to Gateway, and touchdown and return from the Moon. I'd like to see a Mars space station for all the same reasons, but NASA hasn't mentioned that in their planning.
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