Why NASA’s Artemis Program Is So Important
By 2024, we will be sending the first astronauts to the Moon in decades. We’ve gone there already, so what’s different? Let’s take a look.
Since the dawn of mankind, we’ve stared into our night sky, desperate to know what exists outside of our planet. The moon, the stars, and the planets have greatly influenced culture around the world for millennia, from rituals to really confusing sci-fi movies (looking at you, Interstellar). Since the 20th century, space exploration has been a remarkable outlet for technological advancement, international cooperation, and our genuine curiosity.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins made the first successful manned mission to the moon on Apollo 11, something that seemed impossible at the time. Although it took the work of hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars, we did it. It didn’t just mean that the US won the Space Race. It also showed that humanity could do anything if they put in enough effort.
After Apollo 11, ten more astronauts walked on the moon, with the last one being on Apollo 17 in 1972.
Many ask, “Well, our technology has gotten so much better since then, so why did we stop sending people to the moon, and why don’t we just send people regularly, if it’s doable?” Well, there is probably one clear answer to that: money. It takes a LOT of money to get to the moon, and that is the main reason we haven’t sent anyone there in so long. The total cost of Project Apollo was 25.4 billion USD (150.4 billion USD in 2021).
However, we may not have to wait much longer. By 2024, we will be sending the next man and first woman to the moon for the lunar exploration program Artemis. Named after the Greek god Apollo’s twin sister, the program will experiment with many new technologies & systems, while setting the foundation for a future mission to Mars. How will it look different than 1972? Let’s look into it.
SLS: Space Launch System
This will be the most powerful rocket NASA’s ever built. It can hold four astronauts and weighs a colossal 2494.75 tonnes (5.5 million pounds)!
The aerospace giant Boeing had a major role in constructing the SLS, being “the prime contractor for the design, development, test and production of the launch vehicle core stage and upper stages, as well as development of the flight avionics suite”, according to NASA.
The development cost of the SLS was estimated to be a hefty $8.75 billion. However, some reports say they blast past that estimate by a huge amount, as high as a 30% increase.
After many technical challenges, issues, and delays, the first uncrewed launch of the SLS is scheduled for November 2021.
Orion Spacecraft: Entering Deep Space
Eponymous with the large constellation Orion, named after the Greek mythological hunter, this spacecraft will take astronauts further than ever before. The Orion spacecraft will be extremely important to the Artemis program because it would carry the crews to space, support astronauts on missions, and safely return astronauts to Earth from those missions. The craft will be placed at the top of the SLS for up to four astronauts to be in.
The Orion spacecraft consists of three parts: the Launch Abort System, the Crew Module, and the Service Module. The Launch Abort System can take the crew to a safe landing during launch if something goes wrong. Below the LAS and in the middle is the Crew Module, where the astronauts are. At the bottom of Orion is the Service Module, which provides necessary propulsion for things like altitude control, stores necessities (like water, nitrogen, and oxygen), and generates/stores power with its four arrays of solar panels. These three parts of the spacecraft are essential to a successful Artemis mission.
Gateway: The Moon’s Space Station
As part of the Artemis program’s goals to build a presence on the Moon and prepare for Mars missions, NASA has planned to build a mini space station that would orbit the moon. It’s been cited as critical to the potential success of Orion on the moon.
It would serve as a science laboratory, a craft for short-term habitation, and a communication hub. According to NASA, the Gateway will also “be an outpost orbiting the Moon that provides vital support for a sustainable, long-term human return to the lunar surface, as well as a staging point for deep space exploration.” Gateway won’t just be helping us get to the moon — it will help us stay there and give us critical information for future Mars missions.
Step-by-Step: Artemis I, II, & III
These projects will be time-consuming, so all of this won’t be happening at once. Instead, the project will be rolled out over multiple years in different Artemis missions: I, II, & III.
Artemis I
NASA will launch an unmanned flight to test the SLS with the Orion spacecraft on top. Over three weeks, it will travel about 280,000 miles from Earth, including a distance of 40,000 miles beyond the Moon. When Orion gets to the Moon, it will orbit it for about six days to assess the spacecraft’s performance and collect very important data. Orion will fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown, marking an important milestone that will set a foundation for future exploration in space. This mission is planned to be done in 2021.
Artemis II
This will be the first crewed spacecraft to go outside of low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. On this mission, a crew of astronauts will complete a lunar flyby (getting a gravity assist by going near the Moon) and then return to Earth. Artemis II is planned for 2022–23.
Artemis III
Planned to be done by 2024, this mission plans to send a crew of four astronauts to land the moon for the first time since the aforementioned Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew will land on the Moon’s south pole, while two of the astronauts (one of them intended to be the first woman to land on the moon) will go the Moon’s surface (via HLS, Human Landing System) for six and a half days to perform experiments and conduct spacewalks. The other two will be on the Gateway-Orion orbital complex. This mission is essential for future exploration on the Moon because of the data sampled from it, such as ice on its south pole.
While there have been proposed Artemis IV-IX missions, those have not been confirmed yet. News about the missions is sure to develop, though, after we see the results of missions like Artemis I & II.
Risks of Artemis
The more ambitious the task, the more risk involved.
Getting to the Moon is not easy at all, and experience doesn’t make it significantly cheaper. It costs millions (or even billions) and perfect planning to get there, not to mention all the other things that can go wrong in space.
The risks, from large solar flares to DNA-breaking ionizing radiation to the Moon’s deep craters and cliffs, have huge consequences, including the destruction of the spacecraft’s electronics. Thus, it’s apparent that for the Artemis missions to be successful, we need to consider what has already happened and make the right decisions based on that.
“To look forward to the Moon, we need to learn from the past,” says Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at Notre Dame.
“The Apollo program was a monumental achievement. However, Apollo showed us how not to conduct human space exploration because such a program based on international competition is not sustainable.”
Since the next lunar step for NASA is staying on the Moon for a longer time, there are even more risks added to the list. However, we will not know all of the risks until we perform testing, so we will see what happens.
What Does This Mean For Space Exploration?
Artemis is just the beginning of a new era — an era of deep space exploration. The missions on Artemis will teach us more about our Earth and solar system, leading to further discoveries in the future about the mind-boggling universe we live in. Additionally, many strides have already been made in the past few years:
- The United Arab Emirates sent its first-ever interplanetary mission, a Mars orbiter called Hope.
- In May 2020, NASA, along with SpaceX, launched the Falcon 9 rocket, marking the first time humans were launched off US soil in nine years.
- The Rosalind Franklin rover, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation, was scheduled to launch in July 2020 but was postponed to 2022.
- Soon after the UAE launched Hope, China followed with its Tianwen-1 orbiter-lander-rover mission, both in the same month as NASA’s Perseverance rover.
We might even reach Mars by 2025, according to NASA. There is so much technology in the works, and I’m interested to see what happens next. Every day, we are uncovering more and more of the vast universe, from black holes to colorful nebulas.
As we become a more spacefaring civilization, there are a lot of new possibilities for our society’s future. Which ones will become our reality? Only time will tell.
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