To the Moon

It was the summer of 1969 when the Apollo 11 space crew landed on the moon and cemented themselves in history as the winners of the Space Race. Despite achieving remarkable success, it appears as though NASA’s interest toward the moon is unwavering, as it aims to land back in 2025. The “Artemis 1” is already underway, with NASA sending an uncrewed orbiting spacecraft into orbit aimed to  provide analytics for the upcoming moon landing. But why is NASA so interested in landing astronauts back on the moon in the first place, more than fifty years after the first time? According to Ken Chang (NASA employee), “If you believe that the future of humanity is spreading across the solar system, the first stop has to be the moon.” Since humanity’s ambitions of traversing space have exceeded landing on the moon, this mission will serve as a good trial for the capabilities of current technology to colonize other astronomical bodies, like Mars. There is also a fair amount of scientific data that could be retrieved from this mission; researchers have found ice on lunar craters and retrieving samples of the ice and observing its characteristics could provide a chronicle of the entire solar system. Furthermore, the mission can also provide collateral benefits such as improving everyday technology – most notably life support systems, computing, and space engines. Another added benefit of the Artemis 3 mission is that NASA plans on landing both a woman and a person of color on the moon providing a progressive statement to the world. It is with great hope that America inches closer to yet another successful moon landing for all of us to experience. Hopefully the three Artemis missions prove successful in landing humans on the moon once more, allowing people across the globe to witness another moon landing in their lifetimes.