Canadian Jeremy Hansen set to make history. Why haven't we been back to the moon in 53 years?
On Wednesday evening, if all goes according to plan, Canada’s Jeremy Hansen will be part of humanity’s first trip to the moon in over a generation, with the launch of Artemis 2. The last time people orbited the moon was more than 53 years ago, in December of 1972.
Since then, we’ve been to space many times, but never more than a few hundred kilometres above the planet, where the International Space Station flies. The moon is a thousand times further away.
Why haven’t we been back?
That distance is a big reason. So is the cost. In the mid-1960s, with the push to make the first moon landing, NASA’s budget was more than four per cent of U.S. spending. Since then it was fallen off dramatically, never more than one per cent since 1993, and close to a third of one per cent today.
There’s also the fact that the Apollo missions were seen as a race to the moon against the Soviet Union, with U.S. President John F. Kennedy firing the starter pistol with a 1962 address now known as the “We Choose to go to the Moon” speech.
The U.S. had planned missions up to Apollo 20, but with the race already won, costs mounting and a war in Vietnam, the last three were cut.
Have we tried to go back?
U.S. presidents have called for a return, but the money was never there. George Bush made a case for it in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, but his successor Bill Clinton focused instead on a space station in partnership with post-Cold War Russia.
Then George W. Bush in 2004 suggested a moon landing by 2020, only for Barack Obama to cancel the Constellation program needed to get there.
For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019
Donald Trump in his first term wanted to focus on the militarization of space, and on going directly to Mars, before pivoting to favour a return to the moon.
During his second term, a deferred resignation program led to a reduction of 4,000 personnel at NASA . At the same time, Trump told the agency it had until 2030 to build a permanent moon base. But without a massive influx of money, progress has been slow, even with private-sector partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
How much does it cost to get to the moon?
Exact figures for the Apollo program are hard to come by, but most estimates put the cost of that program, which included nine flights to the moon and six landings, at between $20 billion and $30 billion (or $200 billion to $300 billion after inflation).
The Artemis program has racked up some similar costs over time, with one estimate from four years ago suggesting a price tag of $93 billion. In 2021, NASA pegged the cost per launch of an Artemis mission at $4.1 billion.
What are the dangers?
There are many, but distance is key. If something goes wrong on the space station, an astronaut can be brought back quickly. It takes only about 10 minutes for a rocket to reach orbit, and not much longer to get back. (In February, astronaut Michael Fincke became the first medical evacuee of the space station when he suffered health issues.)
The moon is three days away, which means a return trip will take at least that long. In 1971, the Apollo 13 spacecraft suffered an explosion and power loss two days into its mission and still on the way to the moon. NASA decided to send it around the moon and home again as the quickest way back, but even that took four days.
What is the flight plan for Artemis 2?
Similar to Apollo 13 (but with hopefully less drama), Artemis 2 will fly to the moon, loop around the back side and then return to Earth, with the whole mission lasting about 10 days . Comparisons have been made to Apollo 8, the first human trip around the moon in 1968, but that ship orbited the moon, whereas Artemis 2 will merely fly around once before heading home.
What’s new about this mission?
Four astronauts will fly on Artemis 2, a step up from three on the Apollo missions. They include the first woman to fly to the moon (Christina Koch), the first person of colour (Victor Glover) and the first non-American, Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, alongside Commander Reid Wiseman.
Koch noted during a pre-flight press conference that this will also be the first time a mission to the moon hasn’t left everyone else on Earth; there will be 10 others in space on both the ISS and the Chinese space station.
“That is new, that is different,” she said. “We will have crew members and our colleagues orbiting Earth (on) the International Space Station, and we even have an event where we get to talk to them ship-to-ship, which I think is a really exciting moment to be a part of.”
She added: “I think another really cool thing that we are doing is the proximity operations demonstration, where we actually separate from our upper stage rocket and then use it as a target to manually fly a spaceship. That is awesome!”
What comes next?
Scheduled for 2027, Artemis 3 will test one or maybe both of the lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, from the relative safety of low-Earth orbit. (Apollo fans will recognize this as similar to the flight of Apollo 9 in March of 1969.)
Next, Artemis 4 is this century’s Apollo 11, delivering astronauts to the surface of the moon in early 2028. NASA says it plans to follow that up with another landing later in the same year, and then an average of one landing per year after that, along with construction of a lunar base.