GOING BACK TO THE MOON

It’s been a long time since a human voice bellowed from the lunar surface. This year marks half a century since Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan left the last footprints on the Moon in 1972, and a lot has changed since then. That year the first scientific handheld calculator was released; today we carry more computing power in our pocket than that which safely guided the Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back.

Now, at long last, humanity is about to leave low-Earth orbit (LEO) once again. Only two dozen astronauts have achieved that feat so far, all of them white men. Soon the first female astronaut and astronaut of colour will join the lauded lists of moonwalkers. It’s all thanks to the Artemis program – NASA’s plan to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. By 2025 we could see astronauts walk in the lunar dust once more, with the upgrade from grainy black-and-white video footage that half a century of technological progress will bring. A whole new generation could see themselves as budding space travellers, inspired to dream big.

But pulling this off requires an entirely