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It’s a new era of space exploration.
University of Regina Professor of Astronomy, Samantha Lawler, spoke on the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Tues, April 7, about the historic slingshot around the moon in the Artemis II mission.
Read more:
- PHOTOS: Artemis II sails through trip around the moon
- Canadian Space Agency’s first space to Earth video call with Jeremy Hansen
- Jeremy Hansen issues challenge to future generations to break new Artemis record
While robots have gone to Mars and the moon, Lawler said there is still a lot to learn when it comes to sending humans. She said the Artemis II mission is marking the start of going back to do more and seeing just how much they can do in the future.
GREG MORGAN: What makes Artemis II such a historic mission compared to anything that we’ve done since Apollo?
SAMANTHA LAWLER: It’s going back and getting ready to do more. They’ve said over and over, this is a test mission to see how much we can do in the future.
Are we essentially witnessing the beginning of a new space race? Because China seems to want to beat the US to the moon. The US says we’ll be there in 2028, and China is trying to outrun them. Is this like a space race now that inevitably leads to Mars?
LAWLER: That’s the basic idea. There’s so much that we don’t know about. How do humans do long-term living in different gravity and with very different food and different pipes in air? We’re really good at sending robots to the moon and really good at sending robots to Mars, but humans are a totally different game. So there’s a lot to learn, and a lot of that can only be done by actually sending people and seeing what happens.
What do you think we could learn from seeing the far side of the moon up close that we didn’t learn before?
LAWLER: The astronauts talked about how incredible it was to see the far side of the moon, the part that we never see from Earth with our own eyes. One particular highlight for me was a description from the astronauts saying they could actually see flashes on the surface of the Moon from meteors hitting. Here on earth, we get meteors and they burn up in the atmosphere. That’s what shooting stars are, and it happens fairly often, right? You go outside on a dark night, you can see shooting stars, but the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, so they just crash directly into the surface, and apparently, they flash. I had no idea, like, there are all these little surprises that you maybe wouldn’t think about until humans go and look at it. Our brains work differently than robots, and that’s a good thing.
We heard Jeremy Hansen, our Canadian on board, talking about the two craters on the moon. One is going to be called “Integrity,” the name of the Orion spacecraft, and then the other, in honor of Carroll commander Reid Weisman’s late wife. These craters have never been seen before, too, right?
LAWLER: There are new craters happening on the moon, so my understanding is these are new since the last time the moon was surveyed in detail, and that’s why they get these names. I just thought that was such a beautiful human touch to name it after one of the astronauts’ late wife, like, wow.
How important is the Orion spacecraft proving itself on this mission?
LAWLER: That’s pretty key, right? Because NASA and CSA have put so much work into researching this and making it go, and I guess that’s another thing that I’ve really appreciated is these astronauts are going around the moon – that’s incredible – but they’re still having problems with, like, toilets and Microsoft Outlook, right? It’s just very human, very relatable, right? But yeah, just making sure it all works, making sure that we can do something longer in space, that’s the point of this mission.
They will come back to earth on Friday at some point, that will be interesting to watch because you’re probably like me – you watched that lift off, holding your breath, hoping nothing goes wrong.
LAWLER: Yeah, I mean, other than the toilet, I think everything has gone pretty perfectly so far. So that’s a really good sign. I’m very hopeful that everything will go perfectly. But yeah, it’s definitely a hold-your-breath kind of moment coming up when they come back home on Friday.
