It was December 14, 1972, the final day on the moon for the last Apollo mission. The Challenger lander was dusted in a fine coating of gray lunar dirt, called regolith, both inside and out. Geologist Jack Schmitt was packing the sample containers, securing 243 pounds of rocks to bring home. After passing Schmitt the last science instruments, commander Eugene Cernan took a final look at the landscape before climbing into the spacecraft behind him.
“As we leave the moon,” Cernan radioed to Houston, “we leave as we came, and God willing as we return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” He ascended the ladder, leaving the last set of bootprints on the moon, on a valley between a range of low mountains and soft sculptured hills.
Five decades later, NASA has a plan to send astronauts back to the lunar surface. Called Artemis, after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, the project aims to visit a new area of the moon and retrieve new samples, this time with new faces behind the sun visors—including the first woman and first person of color.
Whether this plan will succeed—and whether a fresh moon landing will inspire a new “Artemis generation” in space exploration, as NASA leadership hopes—is a matter of debate. The differences between Artemis and the Apollo program, which itself fizzled out sooner than many had hoped, are certainly stark. Artemis is built on a less exact, less nimble, and much less well-heeled vision of space exploration than the one that launched Cernan and his predecessors. Where Apollo was conceived and executed as a high-priced monument to American ingenuity and the power of capitalism, its sister program is more a reflection of American politics and the power of inertia.
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