Artemis By Alex Reinsch-Goldstein
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It has been fifty years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin piloted their spacecraft Eagle to a landing on the lunar surface at the Sea of Tranquility. The images of Armstrong’s first steps exiting the spacecraft were marveled at in every corner of the Earth. Sometimes, while looking up at the pale face of the moon in the night sky, one is tempted to ask: how have we not been back? Since that brief three-year stint of exploration between 1969 and 1972, in which six missions touched down on the lunar surface, humans have not been outside of the confinements of Earth’s atmosphere. But now, NASA hopes to change that. In May 2019, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the Artemis program, with the goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024, by any means necessary. With Artemis, NASA hopes to build upon the legacy of Apollo, furthering scientific study of the moon while obtaining the knowledge necessary to support humans actually living and working on other worlds. NASA’s sudden declaration of intent---land humans on the moon in four years---raises a good number of questions. Firstly, why not sooner? Why have we not been back since those Apollo missions fifty years ago? It’s not for lack of trying, of course. Even before Apollo was over, there was the Apollo Applications Program, which sought to extend upon Apollo’s accomplishments; its grandiose visions of lunar bases, Venus flybys, and Mars missions never got off the ground due to budget concerns. George H.W. Bush tried to break from previous Earth orbit-focused NASA policy and announced the Space Exploration
Initiative, a vague series of proposals about going back to the Moon and to Mars, which failed to gain Congressional approval due to its lack of concrete funding or timeline proposals (Vice President Dan Quayle, who Bush appointed to head the National Space Counsel,
Artemis hopes to reverse these fortunes. By imposing a rigid deadline of 2024, NASA hopes that Artemis will not suffer from the sooner-or-later attitude of previous programs. saying that there was water and breathable oxygen on Mars didn’t help matters either). George Bush the younger likewise attempted to jumpstart deep space exploration (in a more contrete fashion than his father had done) with the Constellation Program, which frittered about over budget and behind schedule for five years before finally being cancelled when Barack Obama took office. While the Space Shuttle lumbered dozens of times into Earth’s orbit and plans for further exploration were perpetually delayed, it seemed the US space program was going nowhere fast. In fact, “going nowhere fast” adequately describes US space policy since the end of Apollo. Artemis hopes to reverse those fortunes. By imposing a rigid deadline of 2024, NASA hopes that Artemis will not suffer from the sooner-or-later attitude of previous programs. It is indisputable that America’s space program has lost much of its luster, with its inability to build on what Apollo did decades ago or its dependence on Russia to
