Man first walked on the Moon in 1969. Since then, the feat has been repeated several times and could also soon happen again.
The race to travel to the Moon is on again. The installation of a permanent station on this star has become a major objective because it would make it possible to establish a preferred starting point for the long-awaited missions to Mars. Low gravity would facilitate takeoffs to the Red Planet. NASA also, during a press conference last August, took stock of its Artemis program which aims to send humans back to the Moon. If Artemis I consisted of a test flight without a crew on board, Artemis II aims to fly four astronauts around the Moon at the end of 2024. A year later, Artemis III should deposit a crew there. However, at the beginning of January 2024, during a new press conference, the deadlines were postponed as reported Point : “We are adjusting our schedule, with the goal of performing Artemis II in September 2025 and Artemis III in September 2026,” said NASA Director Bill Nelson.
The space agency plans to then launch one mission per year to build a space station in orbit around the Moon as well as a base to establish a long-term human presence. For this ambitious objective, the Americans have established partnerships with Europe, Canada and Japan, which could therefore also send astronauts to the Moon. The United States is not the only one interested in this star: China has announced that it wants to land on the South Pole of the Moon in 2026 with its Chang’e 7 mission.
As a reminder, it was all started in 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to set foot on the lunar soil on July 21 of that year with the Apollo 11 mission. If this date remains in everyone’s memory, the pair is far from being the only one to have succeeded this feat.
Ten other Americans, in fact, went there in the years that followed with the Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions, the Apollo 13 mission having been abandoned following a serious accident which could have been fatal to the crew. Charles Conrad and Alan Bean followed in the footsteps of their predecessors on November 20, 1969 with a much longer mission to the Moon.
In 1971, two new missions were organized with Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, then David Scott and James Irwin respectively. The following year, it was the turn of John Young and Charles Duke, then Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, to undertake the journey. None of them have been there more than once and no one has been back in over 50 years. Who will then be the thirteenth astronaut to walk on the Moon?