The first rocket of the Artemis programme launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, sending the Orion capsule on a journey around the moon and back. The capsule, which is unmanned for this mission but could seat four, is expected to be closest to the moon on the sixth day before returning to Earth on the 26th day.
Artemis is a successor to the Apollo programme, which succeeded in six manned lunar landings at the height of the space race with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. The US plans to go even further with Artemis as the growing rivalry with China spills into space, ultimately aiming to build a lunar base to stage a manned mission to Mars by the 2040s.
The Artemis programme consists of three phases. If the current mission succeeds, a crewed spacecraft will launch in 2024 to perform a lunar flyby. The third mission will be launched as early as 2025 to land astronauts, including the first woman, on the moon.
Nasa’s partners on the Artemis programme include space agencies from Japan and Europe. Orion carries two microsatellites developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, one of which – Omotenashi – will be the first Japanese spacecraft to attempt a moon landing.
Nasa is also eyeing the growing expertise in the private sector. It has encouraged competition between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, choosing SpaceX in 2021 to develop the human lander to bring astronauts to the lunar surface.
The push comes as China pursues its own space ambitions with the help of its state-owned defence industrial complex. It agreed to build a joint lunar base with Russia in 2021, tapping the latter’s extensive experience in space to compete with the US.
The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology company in August announced plans to update its Long March rockets, which have already been used to launch unmanned lunar probes, so they have the payload capacity to handle a human mission to the moon. It said it envisioned Chinese boots on the moon around 2030.
Since becoming China’s leader in 2012, President Xi Jinping has hoped to turn the country into a space superpower alongside the US and Russia. China succeeded in landing its first lunar rover in 2013, and became the first in the world to land a probe on the far side of the moon in 2019. It recovered soil samples from the moon in 2020. It began building its own space station in 2021, which it aims to complete by the end of this year.
The US sees China’s advancements as a potential threat to national security. The Commerce Department in August placed seven space-related organisations in China on the Entity List, restricting their access to US technology.
“US technologies that support space and aerospace activities should not be used to support China’s military modernisation,” Undersecretary of commerce for industry and security Alan Estevez said in a release.
Although Apollo was a major source of American pride during the Cold War, its cost – an estimated US$150 billion in today’s dollars – put significant strain on the country’s coffers.
In contrast, Artemis is expected to cost US$93 billion from 2012 to 2025. The Space Launch System rocket used in the launch and the Orion capsule were developed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively. The companies drew on existing technology, such as the retired Space Shuttle’s engines, to keep down costs.