Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, on Sunday. (PTI)
Apollo vs Artemis: What to know about NASA’s return to moon
Cape Canaveral (US), March 29: NASA’s Apollo moonshots are a tough act to follow, even after all this time.
As four astronauts get set to blast off on humanity’s first trip to the moon in more than half a century, comparisons between Apollo and NASA’s new Artemis programme are inevitable.
The world’s first lunar visitors orbited the moon on Apollo 8. The Artemis II crew will play it safe and zip around the moon in an out-and-back slingshot.
Another key difference: Artemis reflects more of society, with a woman, person of colour and Canadian rocketing away.
While Artemis builds on Apollo and pays homage to it, “there is no way we could be that same mission or ever hope to even be,” said NASA astronaut Christina Koch, part of the Artemis II crew.
Here’s the lowdown on Apollo vs Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, as NASA targets the first six days of April for liftoff.
Run-up to moonshot
It took NASA just eight years to go from putting its first astronaut in space to putting Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969, beating President John Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline.
Artemis has progressed much more slowly, after decades of indecision and flip-flopping between the moon and Mars as the next grand destination.
NASA’s new moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, has soared only once in a test flight without anyone on board more than three years ago. This plodding approach is why NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman overhauled the Artemis programme in February. Keen to emulate Apollo, he added a mission between the upcoming Artemis II mission and the moon landing that’s now shifted to Artemis IV in 2028.
During next year’s revamped Artemis III, astronauts will stick closer to home the same way Apollo 9 did in 1969.
Instead of attempting a moon landing as originally envisioned, they will practice docking their Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with one or both lunar landers under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The rival companies are accelerating work on their landers in a bid to be first.
Apollo was all about beating the Russians to the moon and planting the US flag. Astronauts landed six times from 1969 through 1972, with the longest surface stay lasting 75 hours. For the first Artemis moon landing, a pair of astronauts could spend nearly a week there. (AP)
