On July 20, 1969, the world watched with bated breath as two American astronauts — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — glided across the surface of the moon, with command module pilot Michael Collins watching from above.
It was supposed to usher in a new era: the space age. Humans escaping the “surly bonds of Earth” and expanding out into space.
But after six more missions (including Apollo 13, which famously suffered an accident that precluded them from landing on the lunar surface), humanity’s moon dreams were put to rest following Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Why did it end? Some cite various reasons for this: the costly Vietnam War, the fact that the U.S. had done what it had set out to do (beat the former Soviet Union to the moon) or that public interest had waned. Whatever the reason, it’s been 53 years since humans went anywhere near the moon.
Now, that’s changing with NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, designed to return humans to the lunar surface within the next few years.
But why bother heading back to the moon? How could that possibly benefit humanity?
“We go for science and we go for basically engineering development. You’re doing very difficult things that have never been done before,” said Philip Stooke, professor emeritus and adjunct research professor at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University in London, Ont. “You’re developing new techniques. And this is really the whole reason for doing human space flight right back to the beginning.”
The first human lunar test comes with Artemis II, slated to launch in early February. On board will be the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch.
While they won’t be landing on the moon, their 10-day mission will take them around the moon, where the four will travel the farthest any human has ever travelled before. They will test crucial hardware and perform various experiments designed to provide as much information as possible to the next crew for Artemis III.
That mission is slated for 2028, and will see astronauts return to the lunar surface, specifically to the moon’s south pole, a previously unexplored region (there have been a few attempts with landers, with two successful missions).
Technological advances
There’s not just the Artemis program, which has 61 countries involved, that is aiming for the moon. China is hot on NASA’s tail, with plans to have humans on the moon by 2030. Then there’s India: It has plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040.
The moon is a hot commodity.
This isn’t just about visiting the moon to prove that it can be done. This is about staying on the moon. And there are more than a dozen private companies betting on it being a permanent endeavour.
To some, going to the moon may seem like a frivolous and expensive endeavour and that the money could be best spent in other ways, such as on climate change or poverty.
But to space agencies and private companies, it’s seen as an investment.
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen answered audience questions live on Wednesday, including one about why we are going to the moon in the first place. Hansen will be the first Canadian to fly around the moon as part of the Artemis II mission next year.
“One of the ways to understand … is the involvement of private companies. Private companies look at the profit. And that’s what they are. They are not into scientific development,” said Ram Jakhu, an associate professor at McGill University’s faculty of law in Montreal.
“They know this is for exploitation. Exploitation of resources does not occur in a year or two years. Not in one shot. You’ve got to be there, extract the resources, capture those resources, process them, bring back.”
‘Science of the moon’
But there’s also science that trickles down to everyday human use on Earth.
“Science of the moon specifically benefits people, but there’s another aspect to this and that is the medical, sort of space medicine, let’s say,” Stooke said.
“Monitoring people’s health remotely while they’re orbiting the moon isn’t that different from, let’s say, trying to monitor people’s health remotely because they’re living in the high Arctic and they can’t get to a doctor.”
But some technology can end up coming out of these sorts of space missions almost by accident.
“I guess one of the things that people often comment on is computers. They’ll say, oh, the Apollo spacecraft had a computer on it, but my computer on my phone is a million times more powerful, and it’s true,” Stooke said.
“But the thing is that we might not have what we have today in computers and in phones and I mean, practically everything has a computer chip in it these days, cars and everything. We might not have all that if those early developments hadn’t happened.”
Not only did the Apollo space missions bring us computer technology, but they also helped us with food safety and gave us things like cordless power tools, water purification systems and more.
Technology from the Canadarm has even been modified to be used in hospital surgeries.
New space economy
This new era of lunar exploration can be seen by governments investing in companies.
For example, the Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation (formerly known as the Canadian Space Mining Corporation), was awarded a $1-million a low-enriched uranium nuclear reactor on the moon by the Canadian Space Agency.
There are even llunar mining companies working on extracting resources, such as water and helium-3 — which has long been touted as a clean energy solution — from the moon.
And these companies are creating jobs.
“Space is an enormous business these days. You know, billions and billions of dollars is being made. And the thing is, you know, we — I mean, people — used to criticize Apollo, for instance, by saying, all this money is being spent on going to the moon. And we could say the same now, the Artemis program,” Stooke said.
“But the money’s being spent right here. And it’s paying everybody from the people who mine the titanium to go into the spacecraft to the people who clean the offices.”
As the old cliché goes, only time will tell if this return to the moon will be long-term or left in the lunar dust like Apollo.
But Jakhu is optimisitic.
“What is happening in space in general, and particularly with the moon, is of tremendous importance for humanity and individuals,” he said. “I always believe that space exploration utilization, along with artificial intelligence, is going to transform humanity enormously, in an unprecedented way.”
