Artemis: A ride to the moon.

The year 2021 is an important milestone in the history of mankind and the evolution of technology. Mankind last visited the moon in 1972, three years after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Forty-nine years later, history will be made as to the first woman and the first person of colour are going to walk on the moon.

This history is going to be achieved by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under its Artemis program which was launched in 2017 to return humans to the moon. The program is focused more on the lunar south pole region of the celestial body. As stated on NASA’s official website, the information the astronauts will garner about living and working in space will prove instrumental in planning trips to Mars.

The Artemis program officially commenced in December of 2017 under former U.S President Donald Trump’s administration with a primary concentration on ‘commercial mining of the Moon’. Apart from sending the first woman on the Moon, some of the program’s goals are to establish an enterprise team and a ‘sustainable presence’ and to build a starting point to enable private firms and enterprises in developing a ‘lunar economy’.

A mere month after assuming office, current U.S. President, Joe Biden legally endorsed the program in February 2021. Various sources have reported that billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company Space X, which focuses on space transportation and aerospace manufacture, has been contracted by NASA to ‘manufacture, develop and fly two lunar landing flights with Starship HLS lunar lander’. As indicated by NASA itself, the federal agency is all set to acquire new machines, rockets and tools for the very objective of landing on the moon safely. The ‘new’ rocket is the Space Launch System (SLS) which is going to transport the astronauts inside the Orion Spacecraft. NASA also has potential plans to evaluate and test the rocket in 2021 itself. However, during these tests, no one will be present on the rocket.

Furthermore, the astronauts designated for the mission are going to live in a spaceship called the Gateway which, itself will be revolving around the moon. Astronauts on the Gateway are going to take alternate trips down to the moon for work purposes.

This initiative will undoubtedly be successful and will unequivocally prove to be a turning point in commercial space travel and living for mankind.

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