Late last night NASA’s Artemis II rocket set off on the first manned lunar flight since the days of the Apollo programme in 1972. Planned to last for 10 days, it will include a trip all the way around the Moon. Artemis I was an unmanned flight in December 2022, aimed at testing the rocket technology. NASA’s current plan is to land at the lunar south pole with Artemis III no earlier than mid 2027, but perhaps in 2028. That flight will last for a full 30 days and include a week spent on the lunar surface. The south pole landing site was chosen because there is a higher incidence of water ice deposits there. The overarching objective of the Artemis programme is to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon. Which in turn could lead to manned flights to Mars in the future.
Throughout history and pre-history humanity has lifted its head to the skies in wonder. Pre-historic man used the motion of the Sun, Moon, and Stars to measure change and to mark time. The Moon completes its cycle every 29.5 days. The English word for Moon is derived from the Old English word for month. A day is marked by a complete rotation of the Earth, and a year is marked by the completion of a revolution around the Sun. Symbolically, the Moon has come to represent many things, feminine energy, the unconscious mind, the shadow self, deception, and illusion. It is also still a bit enigmatic. We have good scientific models for how the Moon was formed; the proto-Earth being impacted by a Mars sized object, that then partially combined with the Earth and partially broke away to form the Moon. Though this doesn’t quite explain everything about its formation. I have always been intrigued by the fact that due to its relative size to the Sun and distance from Earth, the Moon is virtually the exact same size as the Sun in the sky, making total eclipses possible. And the rotation of the Moon is in sync with the Earth’s rotation, meaning we only see about 60% of the surface of the Moon from Earth. This creates the idea of the dark side of the Moon, though it’s not actually occulted from the Sun, so technically not actually dark, it is just that we don’t see it.
It also seems strange to many people that we went to the Moon in the late 60s and early 70s and then didn’t bother to go back. And some people are surprised we got there at all, given the more limited technology available in the 1960’s. To understand this you need to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Nazi rocket technology was actually quite advanced in the 1940s. They created the V-1 rocket flying bombs, which were launched against London in June 1944, just after the D-Day landings. These were in effect unguided cruise missiles. It was possible though not easy to shoot these down or to nudge them off course. But the V-2 rockets launched later in 1944 were unstoppable. They went to the edge of space and were guided by radio transmissions. The Nazi’s also developed the world’s first jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262, introduced into combat in mid-1944. It was faster than anything the Allies had at the time, but due to the cost of production, and fuel shortages there weren’t enough of them to have any impact on the outcome of the war. After WW II the USA was quick to capture the rocket technology and to rehabilitate the Nazi scientists to work on their own rocket programme. People like Wernher von Braun were key to the success of the USA’s Apollo programme. Having reached the Moon, the USA then focused on attempting to develop a reusable space vehicle. Which was the Space Shuttle programme, but after the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) disasters, and with the ending of the cold war, the desire for space exploration waned in the USA. It has taken billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, through their organisations Space X and Blue Origin, to revitalise US space ambitions.
I see the Artemis programme as a very positive and progressive move, a long-term project with expansive aims to push humanity forward. Growth for us individually and collectively comes when we stretch ourselves to achieve. John F Kennedy used the goal of putting men on the moon during the 1960’s space race with the Soviet Union. Through his vision and leadership, he galvanised and unified a country and inspired the world. Given the ceaseless negative headlines at the minute, let’s hope the Artemis programme can offer us all something to cheer about.
“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” Isaac Asimov
