REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Commander of the first month NASA in nearly two generations said its crew had a lot on their minds about the 55th anniversary of Apollo 8. Apollo 8, the first human mission to the moon, saw three NASA astronauts launched into the lunar realm on December 21, 1968.
Reported Space, Monday (25/12/2023), Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Andres entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve (24 December) and read the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis on live television, before returning to Earth on 27 December.
Just seven months later, NASA has completed Apollo 9 and 10 and the historic and successful first human landing on July 20, 1969 with Apollo 11. “After we finished Apollo 8,” Wiseman recalled, “I think everyone in the United States knew that we could land now… the system worked! Good grief! We can fly around the moon.”
early Artemis 2 of Wiseman plans to run a similar line to Apollo 8 in 2024. Four astronauts will fly around the moon, although this time missing one orbit, and then return to Earth.
It’s possible they’ll be out there by December 2024, considering the mission is currently set for launch in November 2024. However, regardless of when the crew flew, the time span since the last Apollo mission is impressive in that Apollo 17 was the last human mission to leave the moon on December 14, 1972, which is 51 years ago this year.
Wiseman said his crew felt parallel to Apollo 8, although there were some things that were different. In addition to mission profiles, crew composition includes more diversity. Namely, NASA pilot Victor Glover was the first person of color to leave low Earth orbit, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch was the first woman, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen the first non-American.
The larger Artemis program, as Wiseman points out, was run internationally under the NASA-led Artemis Treaty, unlike Apollo which was largely run in-house.
“To me, with Artemis, we’re building more on the International Space Station (ISS), and a long-term presence in space,” Wiseman said, pointing to things like hardware and export controls. (This is not a coincidental analogy, as the multinational ISS agreement underlies the Artemis Accords, and most of the ISS partners are also part of Artemis.)
Artemis, Wiseman said, was not intended to be a new “space race” with other countries like Apollo was at first (although senior NASA officials have repeatedly mentioned Russia and China as moonshot space powers they are concerned about). He also cited NASA’s expectations of establishing a long-term settlement on the moon in the late 2020s or early 2030s, which would remain in place indefinitely.
“We didn’t really have in mind, ‘Before this decade is out,’” Wiseman continued, referring to the goal set by then-President John F. Kennedy in his famous September 1962 speech promising a moon landing by 1970.
“But we feel like a very strong international team, wherever we go,” Wiseman said. “We’re trying to highlight the Artemis Treaty. I think there are 33 countries right now. This feels to me like a slightly slower, methodical legacy of the International Space Station. We’re here for the long haul.”
2023-12-25 14:35:00
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