This week (on November 16, 2022), NASA reached a milestone with the successful launch of Artemis 1: The rocket developed by NASA for lunar missions has taken off on its first (unnamed) test flight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a lot of praise in the tech community, but also a lot of criticism: Artemis has been assembled from old parts of the space shuttle. The development and launch costs are orders of magnitude higher than those of SpaceX, whose Starship could perform similar missions to Artemis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is something to the criticism. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that Artemis has a right to exist. Here is the reasoning behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Artemis program was announced by the Trump administration in 2019, 50 years after the first man set foot on the moon. At the time, America was not the only country to rediscover the moon. China had announced a manned mission to the moon at the time and many other countries were planning unmanned missions. In addition, America did not have to start at ground zero. In particular, Artemis should start where the Constellation program<\/a> (2005-2011) had stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many reasons to return to the moon, scientific, political and commercial. From a scientific perspective, the Moon is a museum littered with terrestrial rocks older than anything preserved on Earth today, as well as quantities of asteroids from space. In addition, the side facing away from Earth is excellent for astronomy as it is protected from Earth's electromagnetic radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From a political point of view, not much has really changed since the 1960s. And economically, the moon has raw materials to offer (especially heavy hydrogen) and perhaps even tourism. This is one of the reasons why the Space Launch System<\/a>whose first rocket was the Artemis 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n