On September 12, 1962, US President John F. Kennedy announced his intention to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
In the midst of the Cold War, the United States needed a major victory to prove its superiority in space after the Soviet Union launched the first satellite and put the first man into orbit.
“We decided to go to the moon,” Kennedy told 40,000 people at Rice University, “because it’s a challenge that we’re willing to accept, that we’re not willing to postpone, and that we intend to meet.”
Sixty years later, the United States is about to send the first mission of its space program back to the Moon: Artemis. But why repeat something that has already been done?
Criticism has surfaced in recent years, for example from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins and the founder of the nonprofit Mars Society, Robert Zubrin, who have long advocated that the United States go straight to Mars.
But NASA argues that reconquering the Moon is a must before traveling to the Red Planet. These are their arguments:
long space missions
NASA wants to develop a sustainable human presence on the Moon, with missions lasting several weeks, compared to the few days of the Apollo program. The goal: to better understand how to prepare for a multi-year round trip to Mars.
In deep space, 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 the Earth’s magnetic field, which is not the case on the Moon.
Since the first Artemis mission, many experiments are planned to study the impact of radiation on living organisms, and to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-radiation vests.
Furthermore, while supplies can be brought regularly to the ISS, doing so for trips to the Moon, a thousand times further away, is much more complex.
To avoid having to transport everything, and thus reduce costs, NASA wants to learn how to use the resources present on the surface. Specifically, water in the form of ice, whose existence has been confirmed at the south pole of the Moon, and which could be transformed into fuel (water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen, which are used by rockets).
Try on new outfits and equipment
NASA also wants to test technologies on the Moon that will continue to evolve on Mars. First of all, new spacewalking suits.
Its design was entrusted to the company Axiom Space for the first mission to land on the Moon, at the earliest in 2025.
It is also necessary to have vehicles (pressurized or not) ready for the movement of astronauts, as well as housing.
Finally, for sustainable access to an energy source, NASA is working on the development of portable nuclear fission systems.
Solving any problems that arise will be much easier on the Moon, just a few days away, than on Mars, where it takes several months to get there.
Set a hotspot
One of the main objectives of the Artemis program is to build a space station in orbit around the Moon, called Gateway, which will serve as a stopover before traveling to Mars.
All the necessary equipment can be sent there in “several launches”, before the crew finally arrives to leave, Sean Fuller, manager of the Gateway program, told AFP. “Kind of stopping at the gas station to make sure you have all your stuff, and then be on your way.”
Maintain the advantage over China
Aside from Mars, another reason Americans give for settling on the Moon is to do so before the Chinese.
While in the 1960s the space race was between the United States and Russia, today the great competitor is Beijing. China plans to send humans to the Moon by 2030.
“We don’t want China to suddenly get in there and say, ‘This is our exclusive territory,'” NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a recent interview.
for the sake of science
Although the Apollo missions brought nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock to Earth, new samples will further deepen our understanding 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.”
Meir also anticipates concrete benefits on Earth, in technology, engineering, etc., as occurred during the Apollo era.