NASA’s Artemis II mission will soon send astronauts around the moon, if current plans hold. But why is the US so eager to visit the moon for the first time in more than 50 years?
NASA has promised that returning to the moon will lead to new scientific discoveries, bring economic benefits and inspire a new generation of explorers. It’s no secret either China threatens to take over the US as a leader in space exploration, and the United States does not want to fall behind.
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The Moon and Earth are like twins that have danced around each other since the beginning of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, said Sarah Russella planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. This means that they have a shared history of impacts from asteroids, comets and other objects,
“It just has this 4 and a half billion year record of what’s happened on the surface,” Russell told LiveScience. “We can see how it has been affected by impacts, which have also happened to Earth, but we don’t see evidence of that on Earth so easily.”
Biological processes and weather-driven erosion hide the earth’s impact history. The moonhowever, has a thin atmosphere, no weather and no life, so its impact craters can be preserved almost indefinitely. These conditions also provide other research opportunities.
“It’s kind of a great laboratory of what happens to geology if there’s no water or air,” Russell said. “We can understand these very basic (geological) processes much more easily in many cases by looking at them on the Moon.”
Artemis
Artemis II is the second of five introductory missions in the Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term US presence on the Moon for the first time. The first Artemis mission, Artemis I, was an unmanned 26-day flight around the moon in 2022. Artemis II is the first manned spacecraft in the program and is scheduled to send four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth as soon as April 1.
Each Artemis mission is meant to build on its predecessor. Artemis I laid the groundwork for Artemis II, and Artemis II is about testing systems ahead of Artemis III, Artemis IV and Artemis V. The latter two missions aim to put astronauts on the surface of the moon in 2028with Artemis V laying the foundation for what NASA claims will be a permanent lunar base.
NASA famously took 12 astronauts to the lunar surface as part of the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972. Russell noted that lunar samples collected during the Apollo missions has kept scientists busy for more than 50 years, but the Apollo astronauts explored only some of the lunar surface on the near side of the moon, and only its equatorial region.
“It’s like having several expeditions to the Sahara desert and saying, OK, now we understand the Earth,” Russell said. “That’s why it’s important to go back to the moon and especially go to different areas. This is where Artemis is really exciting. The future Artemis mission will go to the south pole of the moon, which is an area that hasn’t really been explored before.”
The Moon’s south pole is a prime location for water ice, which is thought to be concentrated in the polar regions of the Moon’s surface. Studying this water ice gives scientists an opportunity to learn more about Earth’s history of water.
“We want to know how the moon got that water, and the reason we want to know that is because how the moon got its water is probably how the Earth got its water,” Russell said.
Traveling to the moon with a crew would also enable mission scientists to pursue another, perhaps more troubling, goal of the Artemis program — investigating the effects of space travel on human physiology. The Artemis II flight is an opportunity for new studies of astronaut health, including how space travel affects the body, mind and behavior, and how these effects may affect future missions, according to NASA. This is one of the many ways that the lunar missions are potential stepping stones to deeper space exploration.
That’s because the Artemis program is meant to advance technologies and develop infrastructure that will be needed to send astronauts to Mars. Space exploration is difficult, dangerous and expensive, so NASA must test its systems and astronauts on the moon before sending them to longer destinations. Establishing a lunar base could be the key to traveling to Mars.
The moon has resources that should make space more accessible. For example, NASA has claimed that if it can harvest the moon’s water, the space agency could use it to make drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel – although this remains unproven. Shooting for the moon fulfills a broader strategy to find and use resources beyond Earth, which could make space exploration cheaper because not everything is made on Earth and transported elsewhere.
Speaking of money, there’s a potential lunar economy to consider. NASA has said that their lunar strategy stimulating the commercial space industry and creates business opportunities in ways that can promote a lunar economy. The lunar economy currently stems from NASA working with private companies that provide commercial supplies to support the space agency’s mission. Essentially, NASA pays companies to take things to the moon. The space agency currently has 15 of these commercial lunar delivery contracts scheduled for completion by 2028, according to NASA. But as humans begin to colonize the moon, it could also open up valuable mining opportunities.
Moon mining has the potential to become one billion dollar industry. The moon has resources such as rare earth elements, which are mined for electronics on Earth, as well as a potential gold mine in its stocks of helium-3which can eventually be used in nuclear fusion reactors to create almost unlimited clean energy.
The new space race
While the first space race was between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century, nations are once again fighting for control of the final frontier.
Although the US, China and Russia are the main competitors in the “new space race”, more than 80 countries now have a presence in space, according to Royal Museums Greenwich in Great Britain Beyond commercial interests, access to space plays an increasingly important role in a nation’s security – and so could the moon.
Robert Brownhead of the space exploration sector at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, recently described the moon as the “ultimate high ground.” In one video released by the universityBraun said many nations are going to the moon because there is a “nexus between security, exploration and economic goals.”
If the US is to win this second race for the moon, the upcoming Artemis missions must stay on track. China wants to land its own astronauts on the moon before 2030which is at most two years after the first Artemis lunar surface missions, assuming they are a success.
