Lunar missions aren’t just footprints By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Apr. 11, 2023

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2023 (880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“We choose to go to the moon.”

It was more than 60 years ago — Sept. 12, 1962, to be precise — when United States president John F. Kennedy uttered those words, a challenge to the world, during a speech in Houston.

It’s almost 54 years since scientists and astronauts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) fulfilled Mr. Kennedy’s pledge to complete the task before the 1960s ended. People around the world were glued to their television sets to watch Neil Armstrong make one giant leap for mankind July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Time flies, it seems, like a rocket.

NASA announced April 3 that it chooses to go to the moon again, aiming to repeat Mr. Armstrong’s feat by 2025. Part of that effort will be the Artemis 2 mission to orbit the moon, scheduled for November 2024, which will include Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen in its crew of four.

It will be NASA’s first manned lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. Budgetary pressures forced NASA to cancel the final three flights of the Apollo program in 1975, and it has since focused on missions involving the space shuttle, the International Space Station and probes to other planets in the solar system.

So why the moon now, beyond the trite line “Because it’s there,” which Everest mountaineer George Mallory made famous?

The reason is just as pithy: science matters.

We live in an age in which science is often disparaged by climate-change deniers, anti-vaccine activists and creationists. Some even believe the ridiculous notion that Earth is flat and Mr. Armstrong’s historic moon walk was staged in a Hollywood studio.

There’s no better way of breathing some fresh air into the importance of science — and deflating irresponsible pseudo-science — than by making a bold return to the vacuum of space.

The advances the 1960s space race brought to the world are taken for granted in 2023.

Slide rules were still a mathematician’s preferred tool when Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard went into space. The world’s reliance on computerization owes a nod to engineers who created the systems that helped astronauts orbit the Earth, land on the moon and return, even if those massive computers’ power pales next to that of the hand-held smartphone we use today to watch TikTok videos.

Lightweight materials such as aluminum and fibreglass used in rockets, capsules and lunar landers are the same materials employed in modern automobiles.

There will be new advancements in current technology that will arise from the Artemis missions such as the one that awaits Mr. Hansen and his crew members. Will they include improved battery technology that will propel automobiles further on a charge, or solar-power improvements that can heat our homes more cleanly than fossil fuels?

Or, perhaps, a discovery no one has yet considered?

What NASA is banking on with the Artemis missions to the moon is to provide inspiration to a new generation back on Earth.

What NASA is banking on with the Artemis missions to the moon is to provide inspiration to a new generation back on Earth. After all, neither Mr. Hansen, 47, nor any of his Artemis 2 crewmates were born when the Eagle landed in 1969, and neither were the youngsters they will motivate with their lunar exploration.

Imagine what images of the moon’s south pole — the proposed landing site for an Artemis 2025 mission — will look like with 21st-century digital video equipment, compared to the grainy, black-and-white footage of Mr. Armstrong’s historic lunar steps.

Returning to the moon’s orbit in 2024, or setting foot on the surface in 2025, won’t be the giant leap as it was in 1969.

Instead, they will be a stepping stones to greater discoveries on Earth and other worlds to follow.