NUNZIUM

Almost 50 years after the last Apollo mission ventured to the lunar surface, NASA has established the Artemis program, which has the ultimate goal of establishing a long-term presence on the Moon’s surface. With a long-term presence established on or around the Moon, it would then be used for future missions further afield, including to Mars - and it all begins with Artemis I. All of the objectives for the inaugural Artemis flight will demonstrate capabilities necessary for when the Orion spacecraft carries humans to deep space. The list includes an overall safe flight, the performance of the rocket, testing the heat shield and retrieving the spacecraft. Artemis I is officially a test flight where new technologies will be tested without crew onboard. After Artemis I comes Artemis 2 and 3, NASA’s first manned lunar missions in five decades. Artemis 3 will be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. It is also intended to be the first mission to land a woman on the Moon. After the discovery in 2009 of Lunar pits and caves that could provide Earth-like temperatures (17 degrees Celsius, 63 Fahrenheit) long term permanence on the Moon’s surface may not be too far away. These pit craters, and the caves to which they may potentially lead, would make safer, more thermally stable base camps for lunar exploration and long-term habitation than the rest of the Moon’s surface, which heats up to 260 degrees (126.6 Celsius) during the day and drops to 280 degrees below zero at night (-173.3 Celsius).