The Apollo 8 mission of 1968 followed more or less the same plan as Artemis II. Around the Moon and back. Pioneering a pathway for others to follow.
I was 18 months away from being born when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders made that incredible journey, and a year away from existing when Apollo 11’s Eagle lunar module actually landed. So it’s all a legend to me. I know it like the back of my hand, but there are no memories.
A fascination for space and space travel is in my blood, though — the last time I saw my grandpa alive, I was returning a book about the heavens to him. We’d spent many hours tracking down the planets using a telescope that seemed so huge to me, still in single figures, that I thought I might live in it. I would have liked to. The memories I still have of seeing Jupiter’s angry red storm, and close-ups of the Moon’s surface are as vivid now as they were the day we made them.
The Space Shuttle was my Apollo. I still rank it as one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. A vessel that could go into space, and come back intact… and then go again. A miracle.
It first launched in 1981, some seven months after my grandpa’s death, and I was proud to be appointed head of Shuttle Watch at my school. The job was to monitor the huge TV (with a VHS bolted to its stand) that had been wheeled out into the playground, and alert the rest of the school to imminent blast-off as they diverted themselves with the unfathomably earthy pursuit of Sports Day. All went according to plan, and I was not the only one open-mouthed and breathless as Columbia hurtled towards the heavens. What a day. I was heartbroken my grandpa missed it. He would have loved it.
A few years ago, I was in California on holiday with my family when we made a day out of it at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles. There, you will find the Space Shuttle Endeavour— impressively correctly spelled— on show and open to visitors. I surprised myself by filling up and almost shedding a tear when I was in its presence. I wasn’t sad, I was overwhelmed.
I had a similar feeling on April 1 as I watched the beginning of the Artemis II mission some 4,000 miles away in Florida. For the first time in more than 50 years, humans are on their way to the Moon— they have already broken Earth orbit and are, as I write, in the early stages of that 250,000+ mile trip to our only natural satellite. Mind-blowing.
There are those who don’t think the cost is worth it. Others who don’t even believe it’s really happening. Fools. If we are to survive as a species and outlive the Sun, there is only one way we need to go. These are our baby steps. And there are myriad discoveries about the nature of the universe to be made, too. Let’s go and make them.
There are many more reasons why the Artemis programme matters, but these are mine.
So my fingers are crossed and my breath is bated for astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Godspeed — may you safely fulfil your mission to pioneer a pathway for others to follow. For all mankind.
