During the Apollo Program, the Moon was the end goal.
Today, it’s just part of the goal.
If everything goes right, the Moon will be the gateway to deep space.
NASA hasn’t returned to the lunar surface since the final Apollo mission.
But in the next decade, the space agency will try for a triumphant return to the Moon and beyond.
Landing on the Moon was one of the most defining events in the history of humanity.
The Apollo Program reshaped our understanding of the world beyond our own.
Nearly 100,000 photographs from the program documented the lunar landscape
and deep space phenomena.
The Apollo hardware helped build America’s first space station and its software inspired
the development of new technology like the integrated circuit.
The lunar samples brought back revealed that the Moon is much older than we previously
thought which has redirected theories about the formation of our planet.
And still today, scientists are studying the Apollo findings
to help plan for future deep space travel.
Despite all we learned from the program, scientists say that it was really just
a taste of the lunar geological record.
There’s still so much more to explore.
And that’s one of the reasons why, after five decades, NASA is finally planning to
send humans back to the Moon.
This isn’t the first time a return to the lunar surface has been attempted.
In 2004, President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. would revive crewed Moon missions
with the Constellation Program, which was sometimes referred as “Apollo on steroids”.
Constellation required the development of new Apollo inspired spacecraft.
The Orion spacecraft would take the place of the Command Service Module and the Altair
spacecraft would be similar to the original Lunar Module.
But by 2010, NASA’s revamped lunar project was behind schedule and way over budget.
So like the final Apollo missions, Constellation was cancelled.
But not all the work went to waste.
NASA decided to continue building some of the hardware to prepare for future missions.
The Orion spacecraft design was repurposed and evolved to enable more diverse usage,
and it became known as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
The craft’s upgraded crew cabin can house four astronauts for up to 21 days and its
Service Module is equipped with 33 engines fueled by mixed oxides of nitrogen and monomethyl hydrazine.
Orion’s engines are said to be powerful enough to propel the spacecraft to a distance
more than a 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station flies in low-Earth orbit.
NASA also began developing an advanced launch vehicle called the Space Launch System.
Propelled by liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the evolved rocket configuration is expected to
generate 20 percent more thrust than Apollo’s Saturn V
making it capable of lifting the equivalent of 22 elephants.
In 2017, NASA announced the National Space Exploration Campaign, which is geared at getting
astronauts back to deep space.
The campaign calls for a series of complex missions that
will launch as early as 2020.
Kicking things off will be Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed flight in which Orion will travel
hundreds of thousand kilometers past the Moon.
Then, Exploration Mission-2 will send a crewed spacecraft to flyby the Moon, something that
hasn’t happened since 1972.
The following missions will include a lunar landing and the cosmic construction of a new
space station that will orbit the Moon.
NASA says the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway will support four astronauts for up to 60
days and will act as a scientific hub to test new technology, study the effects of the deep
space environment on living organisms, and prepare for a future mission to Mars.
On the surface, it seems like the Exploration Campaign will accomplish a lot of what NASA
originally wanted with the Apollo Program, and then some.
The space agency is already building out parts of Exploration with help from contractors
and other international space agencies.
But how do we know this program won’t meet the same fate as NASA’s other attempts to
return to the Moon?
Well, we don’t and the SLS and Orion spacecraft may not be the vehicles to pull off a return.
But technology is just one part of the complicated and exhilarating world of space exploration.
Pulling off a feat like a lunar landing requires a mix of innovation, competition and courage.
And as the Apollo Program showed us, when those three elements meet,
the impossible can happen.
[JFK] No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come.
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond.
Seeker’s 12 part Apollo series takes you back in time,
diving into the details of each Apollo mission.
You can start from the beginning with this playlist.
And if you liked the Apollo series, let us know in the comments and tell us what science series
you want Seeker to explore next.
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