<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Fifty years ago, three NASA astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, concluding the final Apollo mission. Less than a dozen years after President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to commit itself to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely back to the Earth,” that historic program had achieved its goals and ended.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now, we’re going back. But this time will be different.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A pivotal moment for the return of crewed missions to the moon occurred at 1:47 a.m. EST on November 16, with the successful launch of Artemis I. NASA’s high-powered Space Launch System rocket roared and crackled as it lifted off the Florida coast on its maiden voyage. The rocket pushed the Orion capsule toward the moon, on a flight testing the technology that will eventually bring astronauts, both men and women, back to the lunar surface.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It was just a spectacular launch,” says geologist Jose Hurtado of the University of Texas at El Paso, who works with NASA on mission simulations and programs to train astronauts in geology. “It really hits home to me what I love about space exploration, especially human exploration. It’s just an aspirational and inspirational spectacle, and I hope that everybody that was watching it got some of that inspiration.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now, the United States and China are leading the way to return humans to the moon. The two countries’ programs are massive and complex undertakings with potentially big payoffs. Both aim to boost scientific understanding about the moon and the early Earth, develop new technologies for space exploration and use on Earth, as well as set the stage for longer-term human space exploration.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Better than rovers</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Apollo was “a technological program to serve political ends,” says space historian Teasel Muir-Harmony. It was rooted in the political tension and conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The program “was about winning the hearts and minds of the world public. It was a demonstration of world leadership … of the strength of democracy and then also of capitalism,” says Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo Spacecraft Collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first-ever steps on the moon on July 20, 1969. Over the next few years, 10 more American men hopped, skipped and even drove across the pewter-colored, lifeless terrain of our planet’s only natural companion.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Apollo 17 was the final mission in that series of landings, ending on December 14, 1972 (SN: 12/23/72, p. 404). Once Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt left their footprints embossed in the lunar dust and joined Ronald Evans in the command module, humans stopped walking on the moon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the decades since Apollo 17, about two dozen spacecraft from various countries have visited the moon. Some have orbited, others have slammed into the surface so researchers could study the material in the debris of those collisions, and some have landed and brought lunar samples back to Earth (SN: 1/16/21, p. 7).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While these uncrewed spacecraft have made some big strides in lunar exploration, humans could do better. “Nothing can replace the value of having a human brain and human eyes there on the scene,” Hurtado says. SN</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>