For the first time in 54 years, NASA is sending a human-staffed spacecraft to the moon. Artemis II was scheduled to launch as early as 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying a crew of four astronauts.
Looking forward to the launch in Western New York was Tim Collins, astronomer and co-creator of the space podcast The 7th Magnitude. He was only a toddler when humans last returned from the moon.
“When you realize what this really means to humanity, to go back to the moon, an object that's so close, but yet so far away...” said Collins, while trying to describe his excitement.
The last time humans visited the moon was in December 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walked on the lunar surface and collected numerous samples while Ronald Evans remained in orbit aboard the command module.
The crew of Artemis II is made up of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Koch is set to become the first woman to travel to the moon while Hansen will be the first Canadian astronaut to do so.
While this mission will not include a moon landing, Collins sees more milestones than the ‘firsts’ involving Koch and Hansen.
“It's nice to see that we're going to reach out to international partners this time,” Collins said. “It’s not just national pride now. Now it's becoming more of a global pride, and that's what I'm hoping it'll turn into, and then we can all work together, instead of blurring it politically, like we had to do in the 1960s and early 70s.”
It was with the Apollo program that NASA sent spacecraft to the Moon, answering the challenge by President John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It was amidst a Cold War space race, when the Soviet Union had achieved firsts including the first satellite and the first human in space. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.
This time, Collins notes, a return to the moon isn't about winning a space race but rather to advance the cause of future moon missions. Since Apollo, probes have discovered water ice in remote parts of the moon, making it more plausible to one day establish a base.
“When you think about it with the water, it's the same thing with Mars and what they're trying to do, finding any kind of ice or water that's left,” Collins said. “And the water there is ice now, it's solidified. But you can break that down to the hydrogen and the oxygen. You can use the hydrogen for fuel. You use the oxygen to breathe, and then you can use the water to drink. That's why it's so critical. That's a basic element, and the fact that it's there is very helpful.”
There are limited windows of opportunity for NASA to launch Artemis II Wednesday evening and in the evenings to follow. Should they be unable to send the rocket into space by Monday, April 6, they will have to wait until April 30 at the earliest to try again. Collins explains this is because a specific alignment of Earth and the moon is needed for Artemis II’s flight plan.
“This is a free trajectory return. This is more of a geometric kind of way of going around the moon. Granted, it's a little slower. It's going to be six days instead of three, but it provides an automatic safety net,” he explained. “What that means is they're going to be using the lunar gravity to pull them in and slingshot them back around. It's the same technique that they used in Apollo 13 to get back home when they had the emergency.”
