Fifty Years After Apollo, NASA Starting From Scratch on Moon Mission

Fifty Years After Apollo, , NASA Starting From Scratch , on Moon Mission.

'Newsweek' reports that NASA's upcoming Artemis mission to the moon comes over fifty years after the space agency scrapped the original moon program.

Since then, NASA reportedly discarded much of the hardware that was used in those first successful trips to our planet's rocky satellite.

Artemis is NASA's first step at returning astronauts to the moon and establishing a sustainable presence on the lunar surface.

The Artemis 1 mission serves as a test of NASA's new Orion spacecraft and the most powerful rocket ever built, the Space Launch System.

Over fifty years ago, NASA dismantled the Apollo program, essentially shedding the ability to carry astronauts to the moon.

Robert Frost, an instructor and flight controller at NASA, explains that the incredibly complex technology that carried the Apollo astronauts to and on the moon is now gone.

An individual person cannot contemplate the scale of detail needed to assemble and operate those vehicles, Robert Frost, Instructor and flight controller at NASA, via Newsweek.

So, when the Apollo program ended, the factories that assembled those vehicles were re-tasked or shut down.

The jigs were disassembled.

The molds were destroyed.

, Robert Frost, Instructor and flight controller at NASA, via Newsweek.

'Newsweek' reports that the Apollo and Artemis missions have very different goals and require a distinct technological approach.

I do think NASA will overcome this challenge, as we have the technology to accomplish these lunar landings— but the development and testing processes will need to be executed nearly flawlessly prior to the first landing attempt, Hank Pernicka, Professor of aerospace engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, via Newsweek