Both Firefly and Ispace confirmed that they have established communication with their respective landers, Blue Ghost and Resilience, after launch. Both spacecraft are in good condition and operating as planned as they continue their journeys to the Moon.
NASA maintains numerous contracts in force with private companies, with the aim of promoting the efforts of the Artemis program. Its main goal is to take astronauts to the Moon in 2027 and, in the long term, establish a base in the lunar south polar region, where it is estimated that water in the form of ice, considered the “new lunar gold”, could be abundant.
For its part, Japan does not want to be left behind in the growing space tourism market. The company that operates the Resilience module predicted a few years ago that, by 2040, the Moon will have 1,000 inhabitants and will receive 10,000 visitors annually. Ispace’s goal is to “lead the space economy” by extracting lunar water and shipping experiments, supplies and other materials, both to governments and other space companies.
With the imminent return of the great space powers to the Moon, supported by private giants like SpaceX, this forecast seems increasingly realistic. In 2023, consulting firm PwC estimated that lunar transportation will generate about $350 billion by the end of the next decade.
The future of Artemis, the million-dollar mission to the Moon
If the first Artemis missions are successful, subsequent ones will send more components to the lunar station, allowing astronauts to take extended excursions on the lunar surface, possibly for weeks. According to Koerner, as these missions progress, they become more complex, requiring increasingly sophisticated support infrastructure.
The Artemis project also acts as a testing ground for technologies developed in public-private partnership. NASA has collaborated with Terran Orbital and Rocket Lab to launch the Capstone spacecraft, currently exploring the future orbit of the Lunar Portal. Maxar Technologies will provide power and propulsion for Gateway, while Northrop Grumman is working on the HALO module, where the first astronauts at Gateway will reside and conduct research. SpaceX will launch both via a Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2024.
These large-scale programs also create opportunities for global diplomacy and space agency relationships. NASA is collaborating with numerous international partners on Artemis: the European Space Agency with the Orion service module on Artemis 1 and Gateway’s I-HAB, the Japanese space agency developing a cargo supply spacecraft for Gateway and exploring a vehicle pressurized lunar, and the Canadian space agency designing a robotic arm for the station. Twenty-one countries have signed the Artemis Accords, an attempt by the US government to establish best practices for future international lunar exploration.
However, a project as ambitious as returning to the Moon faces political challenges. First of all, it is expensive. Some critics, such as former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, point to the high cost of the agency’s Space Launch System compared to the less expensive development of SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket and Starship reusable spacecraft.
Programs that go through multiple presidential administrations with different priorities can be vulnerable to political changes. Sometimes a program doesn’t survive a White House transition. While former presidents like George W. Bush and Donald Trump favored lunar missions, Barack Obama focused on launching humans to Mars. “Artemis has gone through several presidential administrations, which is promising. But there are still uncertainties considering the large investment,” notes Teasel Muir-Harmony, a space historian and curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
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