Artemis II mission was a triumph. Now comes the hard part

 

Nasa Via Getty Images

Four astronauts from Nasa's Artemis II mission successfully circled the far side of the Moon and safely returned to Earth. The Orion spacecraft performed admirably and the images the astronauts captured have delighted a whole new generation about the possibilities of space travel.

READ MORE: Nasa Apollo missions: Stories of the last Moon men

 But does this mean that the children enthralled by the mission will be able to live and work on the Moon in their lifetimes?  Perhaps even travel to Mars, as promised by the Artemis program? It seems churlish to say, but looping the Moon was relatively easy.  The really hard part lies ahead, so the answer is "maybe, maybe not".

A lunar lander from the Apollo era - it was tiny compared to what is planned for the next Moon landing(Image: NASA)

In July 1969, when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to land on the Moon, many people believed that this was just the beginning and that people would soon live and work in space. That didn't happen because the Apollo program was started during the Cold War to show the US superiority over the Soviet Union, not out of a love of exploration. Armstrong's "one small step" from his lunar lander accomplished that feat; the job was done. Just a few years after he planted the American flag on the lunar surface, the TV audience figures for subsequent missions plummeted and future Apollo missions were scrapped.

This time, Nasa's stated ambition is different.  With the fifth Artemis mission, scheduled for later that same year, marking the beginning of what the agency refers to as its Moon base, administrator Jared Isaacman has laid out plans for one crewed lunar landing per year beginning in 2028.

Concept artwork showing how Nasa plans to build a lunar base with its international partners(Image:ESA/P. Carril)

It sounds like science fiction, but here are the words of a serious space player dealing in science fact: "The Moon economy will develop," Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), tells me.

"It will take time to set up the various elements, but it will develop."

But as the commander of Apollo 13 famously said when his spacecraft malfunctioned on the way to the Moon: "Houston, we've had a problem..."

The lander problem

Nasa requires a lander in order to set foot on the lunar surface. The US government has contracted two private companies to build them: Elon Musk's SpaceX, which will build a 35-meter-tall lunar version of its Starship rocket, and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which will build a smaller but just as ambitious Blue Moon Mark 2 craft. Both are well behind schedule.

In a report released on March 10, Nasa's own Office of Inspector General presented the situation in stark terms. SpaceX's lunar Starship is at least two years behind its original delivery date, with further delays expected.  Blue Origin's Blue Moon is at least eight months behind schedule, and more than a year later, nearly half of the issues discovered during a 2024 design review remain unfixed. The crew of Artemis II captures 'Earthset' and a solar eclipse on camera. Artemis II: Inside Nasa's mission to take humans back to the Moon

 Has Artemis II demonstrated that we can again land on the Moon? These landers are very different to the compact Eagle module that carried Armstrong and Aldrin to the surface in 1969 and which was just big enough to transport two men to collect some rocks and return.

 The new landers must carry very significant amounts of infrastructure - equipment, pressurised rovers, the early components of a base.  Additionally, carrying that much mass requires a significant amount of propellant, which cannot be launched in a single rocket.

The Artemis program intends to store all of this propellant in a depot that will orbit the Earth and be replenished by more than ten separate tanker flights that will be launched monthly at regular intervals. Despite its elegant appearance, the plan is incredibly challenging.

One of the most difficult engineering tasks in the program is transferring extremely cold liquid oxygen and methane between spacecraft while maintaining their stability in the vacuum of space. "From a physics point of view it makes sense," says Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist from the Open University.  However, he points out that fueling issues caused the launch of Artemis II to be postponed twice this year before it finally took off. "If it's difficult to do in the launch pad, it's going to be much more difficult to do in orbit," he says.

 The purpose of the next Artemis mission, Artemis III, is to test the Orion crew capsule's ability to dock with one or both landers in Earth orbit. It is planned for the middle of 2027. Given that Starship has not yet completed a successful orbital flight and Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has managed just two launches, this target looks, as Barber puts it, "a very steep ask".

The new space race

Nasa has kept its 2028 target for a first Artemis Moon landing in part for political reasons - it now aligns with President Trump's renewed space policy, which calls for Americans to be back on the lunar surface by 2028 – a deadline that falls within his current term of office, due to end that year.

Independent analysts don't believe the target is realistic. But Congress has backed the date with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, partly because there is a new competitor on the horizon.

A test flight of China's Long March 10 rocket, the vehicle designed to carry Chinese astronauts to the Moon(Image: VCG/China Manned Space Agency)

As an economic and military superpower in this century, China has also seen a rapid expansion of its space capabilities, with the stated goal of landing an astronaut on the Moon by 2030. China could reach the Moon first if the Artemis timeline falls behind schedule, as many experts anticipate. It employs a simpler strategy. It uses two rockets, a separate crew module and lander, and avoids the in-orbit refuelling complexity of the American plan.

Mars - the distant dream

Beyond the Moon lies Mars.

Musk has spoken of getting humans to the Red Planet before the end of this decade.

Many experts believe it is far more likely to be the 2040s at the earliest. The journey alone - seven to nine months, through intense radiation, and with no possibility of rescue - presents challenges that dwarf anything involved in getting to the Moon.

Mars's thin atmosphere makes landing a full-sized, crewed spacecraft - and then launching it again - a problem of staggering complexity.

Mars awaits, but is it a step too far for human exploration? (Image: NASA)

Artemis II has put human spaceflight back on the agenda.  Private companies are building rockets and landers with genuine urgency.  Europe is actively debating how much of an engagement to have. After the launch of the Artemis mission, I drove around the Kennedy Space Center and was struck by the new buildings built by Blue Origin and others under construction by SpaceX. These buildings are private infrastructure that is close to a government agency that once sent astronauts to the Moon. Even if the schedules change, this new partnership gives the impression that something special is taking place on the Florida coast, and Nasa has already regained some of its former vigor. After returning from the International Space Station, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst once stated to Aschbacher that the view from space alters everything. Gerst told the ESA boss that he wishes all eight billion people on Earth could go to space just once and see what he saw - a small, fragile, beautiful planet, cared for not nearly well enough by the species lucky enough to live on it.

 Aschbacher asserts that "that would create a very different kind of life on planet Earth."

Source: BBC