Just before my last shuttle mission in 2001 to help build the International Space Station, I asked NASA’s human spaceflight chief when he thought we would return to the moon. “Oh, probably not until 2010,” he replied. I was shocked: how could it take so long to jump from the shuttle and the ISS to the moon? After all, we landed there six times between 1969 and 1972.
NASA’s efforts to return to the moon, home to valuable space resources, have repeatedly stalled due to changing space policy and failed leadership. Finally, 25 years after my question, NASA is ready to make that giant leap. It has rolled its massive Space Launch System booster onto the launch pad and is ready to send the Artemis II crew of four astronauts on a looping path nearly 5,000 miles beyond our celestial neighbor.
President Donald Trump’s first administration tasked NASA with leading an international return to the moon with the Artemis program, but progress has slowed due to halted technical progress and anemic funding. Artemis II will launch the crew of the first Orion spacecraft on a major 10-day test flight to wring out their ship’s systems and test astronauts and mission controllers in the harsh environment 250,000 miles from Earth. A successful flight – the first piloted lunar voyage since 1972’s Apollo 17 – will pave the way for the next Artemis crew to attempt a harrowing landing on the moon’s surface.
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NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program is supporting this research as part of its efforts to prepare for long-term human life on the moon under the Artemis mission. (Skyeports)
Although Artemis II will not attempt to land, it is still a risky and challenging flight. Their Orion, ‘Integrity’, will venture into the extreme environment of cislunar space, a thousand times further from Earth than the orbiting astronauts. Orion’s four astronauts will be dependent on the new life support system for 10 days, and if there is a problem, an emergency stop back to Earth could take as long as three or four days. Crew and mission control must navigate carefully around the moon to safely target their return to Earth, where Orion’s heat shield must survive a scorching 5,000˚ F plunge through the atmosphere to crash land.
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During Artemis I’s uncrewed return in 2022, Orion’s heat shield, instead of smoothly charring and eroding, shed palm-sized chunks of its resinous Avcoat ablator material. It took three years to analyze and understand this worrying cracking behavior, caused by trapped, superheated gas in the heat shield. To minimize gas production and heat shield crumbling, mission planners changed Artemis II’s reentry path. NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, praised the heat shield plan after a review and cleared Artemis II to fly.
From left to right, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch participate in a media meeting, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen, who will fly around the moon during NASA’s Artemis II flight test, visited Washington to discuss their upcoming mission with members of Congress and others. (NASA/Keegan Barber)
A solid Artemis II success is critical for NASA; proving technical competence is critical to maintaining congressional and presidential funding for the upcoming moon landing challenge. In addition to ensuring the success and safety of Artemis II, Isaacman and his mission managers must make a crucial decision in the coming weeks: how to best deploy a lander that could take future Artemis crews to the moon’s rocky terrain.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket was chosen by NASA to serve as the Artemis III lander, but Starship has made slow progress in test launches and has suffered several major setbacks. Each launch of a Starship lander from Earth requires 15 or more other Starship launches to fuel it for its lunar mission, and SpaceX is still a long way from delivering on its promised robotic demonstration mission to the moon.
Isaacman has reopened the lander design to other concepts, perhaps from Blue Origin or other industry partnerships; A workable approach was outlined to Congress last year by former Administrator Mike Griffin. But time is running out for NASA to decide on a lander that will do the job within two or three years; China is pushing ahead with its own plans to send its taikonauts to the moon by 2030.
(L-R) Astronauts Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Hammock Koch stand on stage after being selected for the Artemis II mission that will venture around the moon during a press conference held by NASA and CSA at Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, April 3, 2023. – Traveling aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft during Artemis II, the mission is the agency’s first crewed flight test en route to setting up of a long-term scientific and human organization. presence on the lunar surface. ((Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images))
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China won’t last that long. The CCP is well advanced in testing its own heavy moon rocket, command ship and lander. Just by repeating our Apollo 11 moon feat – something NASA cannot do today – China will celebrate a propaganda victory in space and lay claim to the moon’s polar ice – hundreds of millions of tons of water and potential rocket fuel.
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Competing for these resources requires courageous NASA leadership, which has been in short supply lately. Guiding its partners back to the moon will likely mean putting SpaceX on the back burner and opting for a more practical lander design in the short term.
Artemis II will take three Americans and a Canadian around the moon for the first time in 54 years. Establishing a permanent human presence on the moon will be an even greater challenge. Building on Artemis II’s daring leap to the moon, NASA must create a new, actionable plan for the Artemis III lander. Only then will NASA prove it has the “right stuff” to lead to the moon and beyond.
