For the mission, NASA intends to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon through its Artemis programme. It will involve sending four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit. Then, two of them will transfer to the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) to make their descent to the moon’s surface. The SpaceX moon lander, called Starship, apparently features a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks. Its architecture is intended to evolve to a fully reusable launch and landing system for travel to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Indeed, Mars seemed to loom in the background as NASA’s ultimate, long-term goal. Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate, said that the lunar mission “puts humanity on a path to sustainable lunar exploration and keeps our eyes on missions farther into the solar system, including Mars.”
— Elon Musk, the 2nd (@elonmusk) April 16, 2021 Musk probably can’t wait. He tweeted that if humanity seeded life on multiple planets, there could be a day when some plants and animals go extinct on Earth, but are still alive on Mars. (Source: NASA, Reuters. Header image: NASA.)
