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Artemis - Alex Reinsch-Goldstein
Artemis By Alex Reinsch-Goldstein
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.
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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,
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
launch Americans into space at all since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. Artemis hopes to bring some of that luster back.
How will they do it?
The first critical component of NASA’s plan to return Americans to the moon is the rocket which will take them there. Known as the Space Launch System (SLS), it is an enormous machine--over three hundred feet tall. The SLS will be the most powerful rocket on Earth once it flies for the first time on Artemis I. Belonging to a class of rockets known as Space Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicles, it will repurpose hardware originally built for the Space Shuttle. The SLS is composed of an enormous Core Stage, powered by four RS-25 engines (the same engines used on the Shuttle), with two powerful solid rocket boosters bolted to either side. Various upper stages will sit atop the SLS core to deliver different payloads to the Moon, Mars, or beyond.
To carry America’s next moonwalkers to the lunar sphere, NASA will rely on the Orion spacecraft. Originally conceived during Constellation, Orion was redesigned and repurposed for Artemis. Orion is designed to take four or more astronauts to lunar orbit, from which a lander would then carry them to the surface. Using a capsule design similar to that of Apollo, Orion will carry its crew in a conical Crew Module attached to the European Service Module (ESM), built by the European Space Agency. The ESM will provide life support and propulsion, firing its rocket engine for the crucial burn to return Orion to Earth. One complete Orion spacecraft has already been built, with a second under construction.
Getting humans from Orion onto the lunar surface will be another task entirely. NASA plans to deploy a small space station into lunar orbit, known as the Gateway, to which Orion will dock. At the Gateway, the crew will climb from their Orion spacecraft into a lander placed there by an early lander, placed there by an earlier unmanned launch. To build this lander, NASA has solicited contest entries from almost a dozen companies to build a complete spacecraft or components. For the initial Artemis landings, the lander will be expended after one use. For later missions, the lander will be reusable and will carry the whole crew down the surface (as opposed to leaving two astronauts at the Gateway as in the earlier missions). In only three missions, Artemis aims to achieve its goal. Artemis I, the first flight of the SLS, will send an unmanned Orion around the moon as early as the end of this year. Artemis II, the first manned flight, will follow on a similar trajectory next year. In 2024, Artemis III will land on the lunar south pole. Following Artemis missions will spend longer durations on the lunar surface and deploy a manned lunar base in 2028, and a mission to Mars is projected to follow sometime in the early 2030s. It sounds like a lot, right? The enormous SLS rocket still has to fly, a lander design to be selected, a space station to be deployed to lunar orbit... all in a span of four years. Much of Artemis’ hardware is untested, and the money to fund the program has yet to be appropriated. Budget and technical problems have a way of bringing even the loftiest of dreams crashing down to Earth.
With the impressive legacy of the Apollo program weighing on the mind of NASA, as well as an aggressive goal to give them direction, Artemis has an impetus that many previous NASA programs have lacked. Additionally, Artemis plans to rely on already proven technologies, whether from the Space Shuttle or other sources, saving time and money that would have to be expended on starting from scratch. If everything goes to plan, a 2024 landing may well be possible. It will be no small challenge to put humans on the moon in five years, and everyone in and out of NASA knows that. But it is also a fact that NASA hasn’t progressed anywhere based on small challenges. NASA has the capability to do great things and they have done so in the past. The question now is whether NASA has the determination, efficiency, and money to do it again. The optimist would tell us that we are at a historic moment in the history of spaceflight and our country, and that may well be true: in five years, if we are lucky, we just might be the witnesses to humanity’s next small step... and its next giant leap.
