We Choose to Return to the Moon

By Eric Berger

Six decades have come and gone since President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous speech at Rice Stadium about sending astronauts to the moon. Nearly everyone knows Kennedy’s line about going to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Another part of his speech is less often quoted, but in hindsight stands out.

“To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money,” the president said. “This year’s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined.” The U.S. space budget of $5.4 billion, he said, was a staggering sum. And soon, the budget would swell. Every man, woman and child would pay the equivalent of, in present-day dollars, $5 a week. It was a lot to ask, he admitted, especially without any clear, immediate benefits from the exploration effort. But to do it, and do it right, he said, the nation must be bold.

The Apollo program did cost the nation a staggering sum, and its price tag was so high that after the first few moon landings the political firmament in Washington, D.C., decided the nation could no longer afford to send humans into space. Accordingly, NASA turned its focus closer to home, first developing the space shuttle for low-Earth orbit and then building the International Space Station to give that vehicle, and its astronauts, someplace to go. Only now, nearly 50 years after the final lunar landing, have U.S. and international interests aligned to support a viable plan to return to the moon, and possibly send humans into deep space.

To the Moon …

In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence formally announced the new moon plan during a speech at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Pence said NASA had moved too slowly for too long and with too much timidity. It was time for the U.S. space program to be bold again and make a “major course correction” to speed up efforts to go back to the moon. He announced that NASA would return humans to the moon by 2024 and establish a sustainable lunar presence.

By the end of the Trump presidency, this program, named Artemis after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, was so well ingrained that it took the Biden administration just two weeks to confirm its intention to continue the plan to send humans to the moon in the 2020s and to eventually develop the tools and techniques needed for human exploration on Mars. This policy decision was significant because, since the Apollo program, not a single NASA program to send astronauts into deep space has survived the transition from a president of one major political party to the other.

In addition to support from the White House, a growing number of nations have signed the Artemis Accords — bilateral agreements that allow these countries to participate in the Artemis program while agreeing to abide by the norms of peaceful space exploration. As of August 2022, more than 20 nations had signed on, with negotiations continuing for dozens more.

“I am confidently optimistic that the Artemis program is going to happen,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute and professor of physics and astronomy. In terms of the scientific potential, Alexander thinks Artemis will help scientists “understand the origins of the solar system and our place within it.”

The program also appears to be on firm political ground in Congress, which is important, because while a president can set policy for NASA and appoint its administrators, lawmakers must provide the budget for those priorities. During the budgeting process for fiscal year 2023, both the U.S. Senate and House budget templates provide full funding for the space agency’s human exploration initiatives, indicating a broad level of support not seen for decades for NASA’s deep space exploration plans.

Alexander noted that the scientific community has largely bought into the Artemis program as well. The NASA administrator under President Trump, Rice alumnus Jim Bridenstine ’97, worked closely with his senior science officials to include their priorities in Artemis. As a result, scientific research will be included in both precursor missions to the moon as well as during human landings.

For example, NASA plans to send precursor robotic missions to the moon in the early 2020s. These will primarily consist of small scientific experiments to answer a variety of questions, such as how much ice might be present in the permanently shadowed craters of the South Pole. These missions will be paid for by NASA’s science directorate. Then, astronauts will be able to follow up with in-situ investigations. “This collaboration between science and exploration has really added some luster to the Artemis program and helped it garner more support,” Alexander said.

Bridenstine also managed to stitch together the space community in another important way. Since at least the 1990s, there have largely been two camps in the community of astronauts, space scientists, policymakers and space advocates. One group has wanted NASA to focus on a return to the moon, with a more permanent presence than the flags-and-footprints achievement of Apollo. The other group held a “been there, done that” attitude toward the moon and wanted the space agency to bypass the moon and send humans directly to Mars.

Bridenstine and other leaders at NASA sought to meet the objectives of both communities. Artemis, he said, would focus on going to the moon initially. Astronauts would visit the moon’s South Pole, far from the equatorial regions of the Apollo missions. And they would fly several increasingly long and complex missions to the lunar surface. But at the same time, NASA would develop technologies such as space-based nuclear power, surface habitats, rovers and more that would apply to both the moon and Mars. In this way, the Artemis program would focus on lunar exploration in the near term, while laying the groundwork for eventual human missions to Mars. This approach assured that much of the space community would be on board for Artemis, rather than engaged in an either-or food fight over the moon or Mars.

Alexander believes Artemis offers the best solution to this moon versus Mars debate because Mars advocates could scuttle a moon-only program; and from a funding and technology standpoint, a straight-to-Mars program was likely never going to happen.

“Artemis is a serious endeavor, and it does provide us with the means of developing the requisite technologies for deep space exploration,” Alexander said. “Maybe it will only be used for the moon, but it would also provide those technologies that would give us the opportunity to go to Mars one day if future congresses or administrations want to fund it.”

The Artemis program is not without concerns, of course. The date for landing humans on the moon, during the Artemis III mission, has already slipped from 2024 to 2025, and that date almost certainly will be even later. Independent councils, such as the NASA Advisory Council and independent observers, have also raised concerns about the technological readiness of various elements of the program, including a lunar lander and surface spacesuits. Nevertheless, these programs are funded and moving ahead.

From Moon Rocks to Mars Material

So, if NASA does send astronauts to the South Pole of the moon and on to Mars one day, what is there for them to do?

The six Apollo missions returned 382 kilograms of lunar rocks, core samples and other material from six different sites, and the study of these rocks continues to provide valuable data about the early history of the moon, its relationship to Earth and the formation of the inner solar system. Analysis of these lunar rocks has buttressed the scientific theory that the moon formed from debris in the aftermath of Earth being struck by a planetary body about the size of Mars. Additionally, radiation trapped in lunar soil provides a record of solar output going back more than 4 billion years.

From a scientific standpoint, there remains much more to be learned from studies of these rocks, which can give us a clear picture of the nature of the early solar system. Artemis will go to different regions of the moon than previously explored by the Apollo astronauts, bringing fresh and distinctive samples back to Earth for study.

There are other good reasons to send humans to the moon. Scientists are increasingly convinced that a significant amount of ice exists in the permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar poles, particularly the South Pole. This ice provides a potential source of oxygen and hydrogen, which are useful to propel rockets, as well as for other purposes. The silicon-rich lunar soil may also provide a valuable feedstock for the production of solar panels, which could provide power on the moon and, potentially, back on Earth from beamed microwaves. Because the moon is only three days away, it could eventually become a tourist destination after the first pioneering scientists, engineers and other explorers pave the way.

Managing Mars

The case for human exploration of Mars is more complex. Most importantly, Mars is not days away, but rather six to eight months away, even during optimal launch windows. This journey is fraught with radiation risk, and with rockets powered by chemical (versus electric) propulsion, there is no hope of turning around in an emergency. Unlike the moon, from which astronauts can return in about three days, a crew launching to Mars is committed to at least an 18-month journey. The breakage of a toilet or water reclamation system could be fatal.

There is the risk of landing on a world with a decent amount of gravity and a thin atmosphere, surviving in the harsh irradiated environment and then launching from a distant planet to rendezvous with a return spacecraft. Designing such a mission, with a requisite safety factor, would cost more than President Kennedy’s “good deal of money.” Unless the U.S. commercial space industry delivers on revolutionary transportation technology, such as a fully realized version of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, undertaking a Mars program could cost five or even 10 times as much as a human lunar program.

There are also risks of contamination for Mars. Humans cannot help it — we are covered in bacteria and other microbes that could, pretty easily, escape into the Martian environment. These foreign microbes might contaminate the surface of Mars. And that’s a problem because the primary scientific justification for the exploration of Mars is to determine whether life existed there in the past or possibly remains below ground today. It will be a challenge to devise human missions to Mars that don’t spoil the scientific investigations.

Kirsten Siebach, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice, who specializes in Mars’ geology, said she believes this problem could be overcome — but it’s something that NASA should be researching long before humans launch to the red planet.

“I think it’s a question worthy of detailed study prior to sending humans to Mars,” she said. “It may be that there are certain sites we should send people to on Mars where we would not contaminate important parts of the planet. We certainly don’t want to hinder future exploration in our efforts to advance.”

NASA has sent more than half a dozen landers and rovers to Mars during the last quarter century, and they have performed increasingly sophisticated geological investigations. But robots have their limits, said Siebach, who is helping operate the Perseverance rover on Mars. Humans are much more mobile and capable of making quick decisions. If an astronaut spies an interesting rock, they can walk over and pick it up or break it with a hammer to perform a chemical analysis. It might take a rover a week to perform such an operation, after careful planning and programming by Earth-based engineers, while a human could do the same tasks in minutes or hours at most.

NASA has announced no timeline for when it might send humans to Mars, although realistically the space agency is unlikely to do so for at least 15 or 20 years. The agency’s work on the moon will easily fill that time, and lawmakers are unlikely to increase NASA’s budget in the near future to encompass all of the work it will take to assemble a Mars exploration program. If that sounds disappointing, it should not be.

NASA has gone half a century, since the end of Apollo, without a meaningful plan to return humans to space. With Artemis, it is finally taking the first steps back. Starting with the moon makes sense. If NASA and its commercial partners can execute on lunar missions, it will lay the foundation for exploration of Mars and perhaps beyond.

All Eyes on Artemis

NASA will need all the help it can get, especially from nearby institutions like Rice, whose scientists and engineers helped the agency during Apollo with planning, execution and scientific results, and are positioning themselves to do so again.

The work of Apollo scientists and engineers remains influential today. Among the Rice alumni inspired by Apollo was Shannon Walker ’87, who attended the university as an undergraduate and again in the 1990s for a master’s and Ph.D. in space physics. Walker recalls standing in her backyard with her sister, in 1969, at the age of 4, as her parents pointed to the moon and said people were up there at that very moment. This experience kindled a dream in Walker to become an astronaut. She attended Rice for its intimate setting and challenging coursework and later fulfilled her dream of flying into space, becoming the first native Houstonian to join NASA as an astronaut. She has flown to the International Space Station two times, once on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and a second time aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle.

As the Artemis age dawns, Walker said there is a new energy in the astronaut office at Johnson Space Center about the possibilities ahead. To reach NASA’s goals will require contributions from people of all backgrounds and skills, she said. Rice, with its proximity, can play a key role.

Walker encourages present-day Rice students to come work in the space industry. “We need good people at NASA,” she said. “If you have an interest in just about anything, NASA is probably doing it. If NASA’s not what you want to do, there are some great space companies. There is so much going on, and there’s just going to be so much more opportunity by the time students at Rice graduate.”