2022 Forging ahead in SCIENCE AND SPACEFLIGHT

Race for the Moon

After decades of ignoring our nearest celestial neighbour, nations are now rushing to return to the Moon

Since the Apollo and Soviet missions of the 1960s and 1970s, the Moon has been largely overlooked by space explorers. But that is about to change as dozens of nations and even private companies are set to visit our nearest neighbour in 2022.

The biggest of these is the Artemis I mission, the first stage of NASA’s endeavour to return to the Moon with a female moonwalker. Artemis I will be uncrewed, acting as a test for both the Orion crew capsule that will carry astronauts into lunar orbit and the Saturn V-sized Space Launch System (SLS) that will propel them there. The launch assembly is already fully ‘stacked’ and, once cleared for flight, could be on its way skywards as soon as 12 February. If all goes to plan, the Orion module will take the same flight path