NASA's Artemis Program: The Road to Returning Humans to the Moon Explained

The last time a person was on the moon was in December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. NASA could land people on the moon again by 2026 at the earliest. The reasons are budgetary and political. Landing 12 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements. Astronauts collected rocks, took photos, and performed experiments. Despite all of this, the stays did not establish a lasting human presence on the moon. More than 50 years later, there are still reasons to return people to the moon, and we are getting closer. On Thursday, a US lunar lander touched down on the moon's surface for the first time since Apollo 17. The uncrewed Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, was designed by the company Intuitive Machines with a $118 billion contract from NASA. It's the first commercial mission to touch down on the moon and a huge step toward new human landings. NASA has promised that we will see US astronauts on the moon again soon. Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it's not science or technology hurdles that have held the US back from doing this sooner, but political risks. The biggest impediments to new crewed moon missions are banal and somewhat depressing. One of the hurdles for any spaceflight program is the steep cost. NASA's 2023 budget is $25.4 billion, and the Biden administration is asking Congress to boost that to $27.2 billion for 2024. Those amounts may sound like a windfall, until you consider that the total gets split among all the agency's divisions and ambitious projects. With such a tight budget, NASA is vulnerable to government gridlocks.

Budgetary and Political Challenges

Congress has been slow to pass its 2024 budget — a delay NASA cited as a major reason for layoffs of 8% of its workforce at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February. To compare, NASA's 2023 budget represents roughly 0.5% of US spending. It has fluctuated between 0.4% and 1% since the 1970s, according to a report from the Planetary Society. Returning to the moon costs a significant chunk of that budget. A 2021 report from NASA estimated that the Artemis program to return people to the moon would cost a total of $93 billion from 2012 through 2025. The Apollo program, for comparison, cost about $257 billion in today's dollars. Another issue NASA faces is its graying workforce. An estimated 14% of its workforce is over 40 years old.

Technical and Environmental Challenges

The challenges beyond politics include problematic regolith and eye-popping temperature fluctuations. The moon's harsh environment wouldn't be an ideal place for humans to thrive. The moon is also a 4.5-billion-year-old death trap for humans. The moon's surface is littered with craters and boulders and is exposed directly to the sun's harsh rays. For about 14 days at a time, the moon faces Earth is a boiling hellscape with temperatures below -200 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite these challenges, many astronauts and experts advocate for a base on the moon. Researchers and entrepreneurs say a lunar base could lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes, make it easier to live on Mars, and solve long-standing scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation. However, public interest in lunar exploration is lukewarm, with only 53% of Americans saying the Apollo program was worth the cost.