The last time NASA launched a lunar mission was in 1972, nearly 50 years ago. But on April first, Artemis 2 took off. Artemis 2 is a test flight, with its primary mission to test key systems needed for a crew to establish a base on the Moon.
The crew is made up of four astronauts: Commander Ried Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. Jeremy Hansen will be the first Canadian to go to the moon.
NASA’s Artemis program is aiming to set up a lunar base as soon as 2028. The Artemis 2 mission is expected to take about 10 days; the crew will circle Earth twice and then head towards the Moon.
Astronomy and Physics teacher, Mr. Ramm, explains, “It would be great to put a base on the moon because it has 1/6 the gravity. If we are going to become a space-faring society, it’s a lot easier to launch ships from somewhere that has six times less gravity than it is to launch from Earth. We can save a lot of time and money to go further and more often if we start launching from the moon.”
Not only is this mission ground-breaking since it’s the furthest humans have ever gone in space, but it is also setting us up for further space exploration. “The exciting part is that what we do on the Artemis mission is going to scale out to Mars, so we are trying to build this to be as efficient as possible to get from Earth to the moon,” Mr. Ramm adds.
Additionally, the Artemis 2 crew has become the first humans to see and photograph the ‘dark side of the moon’ — named for the mystery surrounding the far side of the moon, which is not visible from Earth.
As Mr. Ramm puts it: “As homo-sapiens we’ve been looking up and trying to go as far as possible. It’s hard to look up into the night sky and not want to go and see what’s up there and discover.”
It’s difficult to ignore the mysteries of the sky above, and this mission sets us up for future breakthroughs. We’ve been able to accomplish so much when it comes to space exploration, and we are only going to go further. Today’s students are tomorrow’s space exploration pioneers, for the moon and beyond.