Nikunja BIhari Sahu
As the world’s most powerful Space Launch System rocket carrying atop the Orion capsule roared off the launch pad of Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on 1 April on its way to the moon, the moon race was back again. NASA is going to resume from where it had left in 1972, which was the last crewed lunar mission with Apollo 17. With its ambitious Artemis program, NASA aims not just for a symbolic return to the Moon with flags and footprints, but also for a long-term goal of exploring deep space in a way that has never happened before.
Artemis II carried four astronauts, including a woman. The mission is expected to set several human space flight records, including the longest distance travelled from earth (406,773 km), farthest distance travelled beyond the moon (about 7,600 km) and atmospheric reentry speed of about 40,000 km/h. The crew will enter into a lunar flyby path without landing on the moon and will be brought back to earth in atmospheric reentry and splash down in the sea. Its predecessor Artemis I was launched on 16 November, 2022, which orbited the moon at a distance of about 70,000 km from its surface on a 25.5-days flight. It tested the safety and performance of the uncrewed Orion spacecraft in deep space. The most crucial Artemis-4 mission of 2028 will actually land astronauts on the Moon before returning to the earth.
As a part of the mission, two astronauts would spend almost a week in the moon’s south polar region where frozen water possibly exists in permanently shadowed craters. This represents a significant departure from the Apollo missions in which astronauts explored the equatorial regions of the moon. The other successive missions of the series will be utilised to build up a base camp on the moon’s surface and a moon gateway in the lunar orbit that will help landing a number of hardware on the moon. The gateway would also provide an easy transit platform for astronauts to step on the moon. The mission is named after Artemis, the mythological Greek goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo (after whom NASA’s first lunar mission was named). The crewed capsule Orion owes its name to one of the prominent constellations of the night sky who, in classical mythology, was the hunting companion of Artemis. The implications of the Artemis mission are far-reaching. Most importantly, the mission will be a different one from the earlier Apollo programme as, through this, NASA will be able to establish a permanent and sustainable presence on the moon to prepare onward missions to Mars and beyond. Some of these missions will be manned in nature, which has not been accomplished before. While the crew of the last Apollo-17 mission spent only 3 days on the moon, Artemis plans to extend the trip for weeks or possibly for months.
Economically, this fosters a new era of global alliances and private partnership with space industry leaders like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. The mission is more than a journey; it is a quest to unravel the secrets of nature and open up new worlds that would someday become the cradle for humanity’s future generations. Our sphere of living should be extended further beyond the earth’s domain to ensure the resilience and continuity of the human race in the event of a catastrophe. As we gaze upward, we should recognise that the moon is no longer our ultimate destination, but a shore from which we set sail into the infinite cosmos of distant stars. Artemis’ series of missions promises to offer such a new horizon by materialising this distant human goal!
The writer is Education Officer, Regional Science Centre, Bhubaneswar.
