Why the US is going back to the Moon

If everything goes to plan (pretty big ‘if’ these days), NASA’s Artemis II mission will take off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre aboard a 98m (322ft) rocket during a two-hour window later today (Wednesday), from 18:24 ET.

Destination? The Moon.

It’s a fly-by rather than landing, but still significant for a couple of reasons:

• Slingshotting around the Moon, the astronauts will end up 400,000km (250,000mi) from Earth, the farthest humans have ever ventured, and
• One of those four astronauts (Canada’s Jeremy Hansen) will be the first non-US citizen to leave Earth’s orbit.

But the mission is really part of a dress-rehearsal for Artemis IV (maybe 2028?), which aims to put folks back on the Moon for the first time since 1972. And that’s all a stepping stone to Mars, though NASA hasn’t gotten around to coining a cool Greek program name yet.

So… where’s the intrigue?

Recall that last century’s Apollo program (all 11 of them) aimed to a) beat the Soviets, b) demonstrate US technological and industrial supremacy, and thereby c) signal the broader superiority of the US political and economic system (free market democracy).

We mention all this because in Greek mythology, Apollo had a twin sister called… Artemis. And as today’s sister program, Artemis shares Apollo’s aims beyond walking the Moon: she’s likewise chasing an aura boost (Gen Z, did we use that correctly?) in a tense world.

But there are a few key differences. First, this is less about a flags-and-footprints repeat of Apollo, and more about establishing a sustainable, long-term lunar presence — or to put it another way, it’s about who sets the rules for the next century of space exploration.

Second, Artemis has a bigger economic component via its vision for a lunar economy, extracting lunar resources, and leveraging more US businesses along the way. Or to put it another way, it’s about who gets the benefits from space and its exploration.

But also third, the competition now looks different.

Today’s primary rival is China, targeting its first crewed lunar landing by 2030, followed by a permanent south-pole base for resource extraction.

The Russians are still there too, though looking wobbly after their big 2023 lander crash, plus last November’s accident at their only crewed launch pad (repairs are ongoing).

The two neighbours also work together on the International Lunar Research Station, the planned nuclear-powered rival to Artemis, nominally scheduled for 2035.

But their aims in space? Similar to America’s, though with some key additions:

• Moscow and Beijing are signalling to a hedging world that you can skip the chaos and decadence of Western democracy, and still deliver high-tech triumphs
• They’re also signalling to their own citizens back home that maybe one-party, strongman rule offers the best path to national greatness, and
• For Putin specifically, a space program (like a nuclear program) also helps him cosplay as a world player amid his failing invasion of a much smaller neighbour.

Meanwhile, of course, there are others now gunning for space, too, whether India and Japan (who’ve already achieved an uncrewed lunar landing), or the EU (aiming to join that club in 2030).

And sure, all three cooperate with the US — including via Artemis — but if you read their strategies, they’re all really chasing space autonomy more than leadership: ie, in a multipolar world, they’re prioritising space access without overreliance.

All this to say that in today’s world, that Moon above now feels much less like a finish line.

Intrigue’s Take

We’ve naturally focused on this mission’s international dimensions, but there’s also an internal angle to Artemis with big implications: with American trust in public institutions sitting near record lows, today’s launch theoretically presents a chance to remind folks that governments can (and must) still achieve extraordinary things.

But we use ‘theoretically’ advisedly — for many (including NASA’s new boss, Isaacman), today’s $4B per-launch SLS rocket (Boeing) and $20B Orion capsule (Lockheed) will be proof of NASA’s bloated cost-plus contracts, not to mention the agency’s struggles with bureaucracy, risk-aversion, and even politicisation (to spread the spend across 50 states).

The other related internal angle is around America’s evolving public-private equilibrium, as Isaacman aims to lean more into US private sector strengths. Players like Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin each bring their own cultures, speeds, and egos, though that’s actually not as new as it sounds: some of America’s earliest space advances, whether liquid-fuel rocketry or the Lick and Wilson observatories, were actually bankrolled by America’s richest families at the time, like the Guggenheims and Carnegies.

So while this broader Space Race 2.0 plays out, history might also see today’s Artemis launch as a broader stress test for whether 21st-century America can still nail that messy blend of public ambition and private dynamism, and thus still do big, hard things together.

Sound even smarter:

• Artemis I sent an uncrewed flight around the Moon in 2022; Artemis II is today’s crewed fly-by; and Artemis III (maybe 2027?) aims for crewed testing with SpaceX and/or Blue Origin landers. Artemis IV (maybe 2028?) aims to then walk on the Moon. The original goal was for Artemis III to already walk on the Moon by 2024.
• Via Artemis, Japan has committed to develop (with Toyota) a pressurised lunar rover, in return for the US committing to fly two Japanese astronauts on future Artemis landings. They’d be the first non-American(s) to walk on the Moon.