It was the height of the Cold War and America needed a big win to demonstrate its space superiority after the Soviet Union had launched the first satellite and put the first man into orbit. “We choose to go to the Moon,” Kennedy told 40,000 people at Rice University, “because this challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are not willing to postpone, and one we intend to win.” Sixty years later, the United States is about to launch the first mission of its return program to the Moon, Artemis. But why repeat what has already been done? Criticism has grown in recent years, for example from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins and Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin, who have long advocated for America to go directly to Mars. But NASA maintains that recapturing the Moon is necessary before a trip to the Red Planet. Here’s why. NASA wants to develop a sustainable human presence on the Moon, with missions lasting several weeks — compared to just a few days for Apollo. The goal: to better understand how to prepare for a multi-year round trip to Mars. In deep space, the radiation is much more intense and poses a real threat to health. Low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station (ISS) operates, is partially shielded from radiation by Earth’s magnetic field, which is not the case on the Moon. Since the first Artemis mission, many experiments have been planned to study the effect of this radiation on living organisms and to evaluate the effectiveness of an anti-radiation vest. Moreover, while the ISS can often be refueled, trips to the Moon — thousands of times farther — are much more complicated. To avoid having to take everything with them and to save costs, NASA wants to learn how to use the resources that exist on the surface. Specifically, water ice, which has been confirmed to exist at the lunar south pole, could be turned into rocket fuel by breaking it into its individual hydrogen and oxygen atoms. NASA also wants to pilot to the Moon the technologies that will continue to be developed on Mars. First, new spacesuits for spacewalks. Their design was assigned to the company Axiom Space for the first mission to land on the Moon, in 2025 at the earliest. Other needs: vehicles — both pressurized and unpressurized — so the astronauts can move around, and habitats. Finally, for sustainable access to an energy source, NASA is working to develop portable nuclear fission systems. Solving any problems that arise will be much easier on the Moon, which is only a few days away, than on Mars, which you can only reach in at least several months. An important pillar of the Artemis program is the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon, called Gateway, which will serve as a relay before the trip to Mars. All the necessary equipment can be sent there in “multiple launches” before it is finally joined by the crew to begin the long journey, Gateway program manager Sean Fuller told AFP. “Like stopping at your gas station to make sure you’ve got all your stuff and then leaving.” Besides Mars, another reason the Americans put forward for settling on the Moon is to do so before the Chinese, who plan to send astronauts by the year 2030. China is the United States’ main competition today as the once-proud Russian space program has withered. “We don’t want China to suddenly get there and say, ‘This is our exclusive territory,’” NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a recent interview. While the Apollo missions brought back to Earth nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock, new samples will make it possible to further deepen our knowledge of this celestial object and its formation. “The samples we collected during the Apollo missions changed the way we see our solar system,” astronaut Jessica Meir told AFP. “I think we can expect that from the Artemis program as well.” He also anticipates further scientific and technological breakthroughs, just as in the Apollo era. to/take/dw
