First Moon Landing’s 50th Anniversary Brings Promise of a Return

Landing humans on the moon in 1969—less than a decade after President Kennedy announced the United States’ commitment to the feat—is one of the most remarkable and inspiring triumphs in human history. It is a testament to what mankind is capable of achieving with the necessary resources and a shared sense of purpose, though much of that shared sense of purpose came from the Space Race largely acting as an extension of the Cold War arms race with the former USSR.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

Following Apollo 11’s successful lunar landing mission, the United States undertook five more successful voyages to the moon (see sidebar) before the Apollo program came to an end. Without an enemy in the Space Race following the collapse of the Soviet Union, even space shuttle missions to Earth’s orbit were deemed too costly by many, and so the shuttle program came to an end in 2011, leaving U.S. astronauts to hitch rides on Russian Soyuz rockets to reach the International Space Station.

However, the pendulum always swings back to the other side, and in 2017 President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, an initiative to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, with the ultimate goal of using it as a staging platform to get to Mars. The president followed through on his plans recently when he announced his 2020 budget, which earmarked an additional $1.6 billion above the $21 billion budget he had already requested for NASA to support the effort. Tumultuous political climate aside, the idea of returning to the moon and kickstarting a mission to Mars is just plain exciting—appealing to the optimistic futurist in all of us.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

The Artemis lunar program—named for the twin sister of Apollo—will utilize a spiffy new rocket called the SLS and a freshly designed spacecraft called Orion to launch a team of four astronauts (two of whom will descend to the surface while two remain in orbit) on a mission to the moon’s south pole. And while the thought of moon-penguins is adorable, NASA scientists actually chose that landing site because it is believed to have one of the greatest concentrations of accessible resources on the satellite—possibly including ice—which could be useful for sustaining repeat visits and supplying ships with fuel and other necessities en route to Mars.

With such an aggressive timeline in place, progress updates have been coming fast. In May alone, NASA announced partnerships with private companies to develop propulsion systems and lunar landers for the Artemis program as well as deliver scientific payloads to the moon’s surface in advance of the crewed mission. And speaking of the crew, for the first time in history, NASA wants to ensure that one of the two astronauts who descends to the surface in the lunar lander is a woman.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Exploring Space with NASA and ASU

In a recent tweet, President Trump reinforced that his ultimate priority is Mars. To that, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine later clarified in a statement that while Mars is the ultimate goal, the moon mission is and remains an important step on the way to that goal.

Between the strides made by commercial companies like SpaceX and NASA’s recommitment to manned lunar missions, it seems that we may be entering a new golden age of space exploration. And frankly, after years of consuming dystopic portrayals of the future in media, it’s a nice palette cleanser to imagine the great gains that the future may hold. Space tourism, anyone?