NUNZIUM

Almost 50 years after the last Apollo mission ventured to the lunar surface, NASA has successfully started the Artemis program, which has the ultimate goal of establishing a long-term presence on the Moon’s surface. On November 16 Artemis I left the ground successfully at 6:47 UTC and started its journey to the “dark side” of the moon. Due to fuel leakage, this launch was postponed from the original date of August 29. Towards the same objective, the Chinese Space program also achieved significant advancements by assembling the Mengtian lab module and completing the country’s first space station on November 3. After the discovery in 2009 of Lunar pits and caves that could provide Earth-like temperatures - about 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). On September 10 samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 mission revealed high water content in lunar minerals, which would offer the world direct evidence for the existence of water on the Moon. Successive missions will further explore the moon's surface to identify a site for International Lunar Research Station. A competition, the one between US and China, much reminds the past Cold War which brought the first man to the moon.