NASA’s crewed return to the moon is a world affair, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated today (Dec. 20).
In the course of the third meeting of the National Space Council (NSC), which she chairs, Harris pledged that NASA’s Artemis program will send a non-American to the lunar surface within the relatively near future.
“We intend to land a world astronaut on the surface of the moon by the tip of the last decade,” Harris said. She didn’t provide further details, similar to which nation that astronaut will represent.
The Artemis program goals to determine a everlasting, sustainable human presence on the lunar surface by the tip of the last decade. The abilities and knowledge gained via this effort will help our species make the leap to Mars within the 2030s or 2040s, NASA officials have said.
NASA is leveraging quite a lot of partnerships, each industrial and international, to attain Artemis’ daring goals. For instance, the European Space Agency (ESA) provides the service module for Orion, the American-made capsule that may fly Artemis astronauts to lunar orbit. And ESA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are all contributing significantly to Gateway, the small space station that NASA plans to construct in lunar orbit a number of years from now.
One Artemis mission is within the books already: Artemis 1, which sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back late last yr. Artemis 2 is slated to send 4 astronauts — three NASA spaceflyers and the CSA’s Jeremy Hansen — across the moon in late 2024 or 2025.
Then the surface missions are scheduled to start. Artemis 3, which is able to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole, is targeted for 2025 or 2026. After that may come Artemis 4 and Artemis 5, which could launch as soon as 2028 and 2029, respectively.
Artemis 4 and Artemis 5 will each feature one European astronaut, ESA Director Josef Aschbacher told Space.com in July. So Harris’ statement at today’s NSC meeting, which was held on the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., doesn’t actually matter as breaking news.
Still, her public pledge reaffirmed that Artemis is a special animal than Apollo, a flags-and-footprints effort during which america journeyed very much alone. Indeed, Harris stressed today that 33 nations have now signed on to the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, which lay out a framework for responsible lunar exploration.
“This announcement, and this meeting of our National Space Council, is further demonstration of our belief within the critical importance of international partnership,” Harris said.
Artemis wasn’t the one topic of debate at today’s meeting of the NSC, a policy-shaping body made up of several dozen high-ranking U.S. officials, including the NASA administrator, the Director of National Intelligence and the secretaries of defense, state, commerce, transportation and homeland security.
For instance, several attendees stressed the national-security importance of the ultimate frontier.
“For my part, space has emerged as our most essential warfighting domain, integral to our national security, our coalition interoperability and our global stability,” said Adm. Chris Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“And it is thru our mastery of this domain — mastery along with all of our allies and partners — that we gain unparalleled clarity in visualizing the battlefield, a perspective that is important for informed, rapid decision-making, for precision effects and, ultimately, for the attention that we want to best defend our nations,” Grady added.
Today’s NSC meeting occurred on the fourth anniversary of the establishment of the U.S. Space Force, a detail highlighted by each Harris and Grady.
“The youngest service in our joint force is important to protecting our most important space systems, to collaborating with industrial industry and to prioritizing our interoperability with allies and partners,” Grady said.