NASA’s first moon commander in nearly two generations says his crew is pondering loads in regards to the fifty fifth anniversary of Apollo 8.
Apollo 8, the primary human mission to the moon, saw three NASA astronauts launch to lunar realms on Dec. 21, 1968. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) and did a reading of the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis on live television, before coming back to Earth on Dec. 27.
Only seven months later, NASA had finished Apollos 9 and 10 and the historic, successful debut human landing on July 20, 1969 with Apollo 11. “Once we did Apollo 8,” Wiseman recalled, “I believe everybody in the US knew we are able to land now … the systems work! Holy smokes! We will fly across the moon.”
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Wiseman’s Artemis 2 crew plans to run an identical track to Apollo 8 in 2024. 4 astronauts will fly across the moon, albeit skipping an orbit this time, after which make their way back to Earth. It’s possible that they might be on the market in December 2024, given the mission is currently manifested to launch in November 2024. No matter when the crew flies, nonetheless, the span of time because the last Apollo mission is impressive: Apollo 17 was the last human mission to depart the moon on Dec. 14, 1972, which is 51 years ago this 12 months.
Wiseman said his crew feels parallels with Apollo 8, although a couple of things are different. Except for the mission profile, the crew composition includes more diversity: NASA pilot Victor Glover is the primary person of color to depart low Earth orbit, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch is the primary woman, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen the primary non-American. The greater Artemis program, as Wiseman identified, is run internationally under the NASA-led Artemis Accords, unlike Apollo where the agency mostly went by itself.
“It feels to me, with Artemis, we’re constructing more on the International Space Station (ISS), and a long-term presence in space,” Wiseman said, pointing to items like hardware and export controls. (That is not an accidental analogy, because the ISS multinational agreements inform the Artemis Accords, and many of the ISS partners are also a component of Artemis.)
Artemis, Wiseman said, isn’t meant to be a brand new “space race” with one other nation like Apollo was in the beginning (despite the fact that senior NASA officials repeatedly cite Russia and China as moon-facing space powers they worry about). He also cited NASA’s expectations of constructing a long-term settlement on the moon later within the 2020s or within the early 2030s, to stay indefinitely.
“We do not really have a, ‘Before this decade is out,’ ” Wiseman continued, referring to the goal set by then-President John F. Kennedy in a famous September 1962 speech promising a lunar landing before 1970.
“But we do feel a very robust international team, in every single place we go,” Wiseman said. “We try to focus on the Artemis Accords. I believe we’re as much as 33 nations now. To me it appears like it’s built on the International Space Station legacy of slightly slower, methodical. We’re here for the long run.”
Alternatively, Wiseman got a special call after his hectic selection on April 3, 2023. The day included a livestreamed announcement at a crowded Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, a series of five-minute interviews with media for hours on end, and an NCAA basketball game to begin the general public relations side of the mission.
“I’m sitting on my couch later that day, completely exhausted,” Wiseman recalled. “My cellular phone rings. It’s an unknown number. I assumed it was a telemarketer, and I picked it up all annoyed. It was Tom Stafford, you realize, who flew Apollo 10. He was so excited that we were heading back to the moon.”