Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before

Yesterday, we witnessed an event we haven't seen since Apollo 17, launched on December 7, 1972, where humans last were sent to the Moon. It was a twelve-day mission, launched on a 363-foot Saturn V rocket, which had been the most powerful vehicle of the time.

In comparison, the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule stand 322 feet (98 meters) tall when fully stacked, roughly equivalent to a 30-story building. It is shorter than the 363-foot Apollo-era Saturn V, but is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA.

The crew, which by itself is historic and consists of four astronauts manning the ten-day mission around the Moon: Commander Reid Wisenan, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. This crew includes the first woman (Koch), the first Black astronaut (Glover), and the first non-US citizen (Hansen) to fly to the Moon.

The ten-day trip will not involve a moon landing at this time; however, it will feature the farthest humanity ever traveled beyond Terra Firma. These heroes will travel around the Moon, about 4,700 miles behind the Moon, easily breaking the previous 158-mile mark set by the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft during its lunar journey in 1970.

Similar to Apollo 13, the mission will use a free-return trajectory, a type of orbital path in which a spacecraft travels from a primary body (like Earth) to a secondary body (like the Moon) and returns to the primary body using gravity alone, requiring no additional propulsion. This maneuver uses the Moon’s gravity to slingshot the spacecraft back toward Earth, typically forming a figure-8 shape.

The knowledge we have learned since the earliest days of the space age is astounding, and much of it will be applied in this flight. As humans, across many nations, we have achieved many successes in space and suffered several tragedies. But humanity's quest for knowledge is is a goal which cannot be diminished.

These four people will learn more about our Solar System during this trip, than all people who ever lived who gazed at the stars and wondered what was beyond. They will look out into the deep reaches of space, well beyond the safety of Earth and Moon to see what no one saw before from that distance.

Fiction showed us in 1966 what humanity would witness in the twenty-third century. Over the next ten days, four people will actually take the first look what is clearly out there from a distance never before traveled.

Godspeed Artemis for a great journey to the beyond and for a safe return to tell us what you saw.