A new era in spaceflight: Back to the moon on the way to Mars

Christina Barron, The Washington Post

Published

11:12 am CST, Thursday, November 8, 2018

On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy issued a challenge to lawmakers, the new U.S. space agency and the American people.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth," Kennedy said in a speech before Congress.

It was an ambitious goal. But in July 1969, NASA would achieve it. Apollo 11 – with Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin aboard – landed on the lunar surface and made it back to Earth. This moonshot was no one-shot deal. Astronauts returned to the moon for further exploration.

NASA announced this summer in the 2020s, about 50 years ago after astronauts last visited. But this time, the moon is not considered at destination. It's a pit stop on the way to the next space goal: sending humans to Mars. To understand this new era of human spaceflight, it's important to look back at what Kennedy set in motion 57 years ago.

When Kennedy made his plea to Congress, the United States had just launched its first manned spacecraft. Alan Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight, traveling 115 miles up and then returning to Earth. The Soviet Union had been in charge of space several weeks earlier. Not only had Yuri Gagarin's flight lasted longer – 108 minutes – but he also completed a single orbit of the Earth. The United States was embarrassed. It did not want the Soviets – the only other world superpower at the time – to get ahead in space exploration.

"There is this battle for hearts and minds," says Teasel Muir-Harmony, Space History Curator at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. "Beating the Soviets in space was important for the United States' place in the world."

The president spoke with NASA scientists about which achievement was within reach for the United States.

"The U.S. at the time was better at landings," Muir-Harmony said. "The Soviet Union at the time was having trouble with landings."

So they're landing on the moon, which is on average 240,000 miles away. At that point, Gagarin had traveled the farthest from Earth – 203 miles. Muir-Harmony said Kennedy purposely not to be liked just one step ahead of the Soviets.

"If we propose this program that's really bold … they'd have to invest in new technologies," Muir-Harmony said. Members of Congress would debate about $ 1.7 billion on the next year.

That money and billions more approved in the 1960s not only for the Apollo missions but also rockets and other technology that NASA has used in the decades since then. That, too, was part of Kennedy's pitch to Congress.

"He said," perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the end of the solar system itself, "he said.

NASA has spacecraft to explore the world, but no has included humans. Instead, astronauts have been studying the effects of living and working in space by orbiting Earth, first on Skylab and since 2000 on the International Space Station (ISS).

The missions have become more collaborative than competitive. NASA has four international partners: space agencies in Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe. More than 100 astronauts and cosmonauts have stayed on the ISS for long-term assignments. And private companies have partnered with NASA. Two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, are set to become the first private companies to ferry astronauts to the ISS.

NASA aims to work with these partners and others as it moves towards human missions to Mars. The agency's leader, Jim Bridenstine, explained in September that the plan to get to work with rovers, robots and humans.

"The glory of the moon is that's only a three-day journey home," Bridenstine told members of Congress. "So we can all of the technologies, we can reduce all of the risks."

And in the event of an emergency, NASA can get astronauts home quickly, he said. The journey from Mars, which is on average 140 million miles from Earth, would take about eight months.

Bridenstine announced in October that 2018 or 2020. A human trip to orbit the moon would launch in 2023. An orbiting "gateway," or a lunar space station, would follow. The gateway would allow humans and equipment to get to the moon's surface. Eventually it would serve as a launchpad to Mars.

These moon missions will be similar to Apollo in that the United States wants to prove its leadership in space exploration. Muir-Harmony goal pointed out an important difference.

"We want to expand our knowledge of the universe." We want to advance science, "she said. "There's not an end goal."