The real reason America wants to return to the Moon

Artemis II was a triumph, but there was some sinister reasoning behind our latest Moon mission

- GEORGINA TORBET

The world’s eyes have once again been turned to the heavens, thanks to NASA’s success with Artemis II. The successful mission saw four astronauts travel around the Moon and return to Earth — a small step towards the agency’s overarching aim of establishing a lunar base.

For those who remember the Apollo programme of the 1960s and 70s, though, the pressing question this return journey raises is: Why bother sending humans back to the Moon at all?

THE FIRST MOON BASE

There are plenty of compelling scientific reasons to return to the Moon, from collecting samples to study the formation of the Solar System to placing a telescope there for a clearer view of the stars, free from the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere. But recent decades have seen scientific concerns take a backseat to geopolitical realities.

America’s decision to return humans to the Moon is a direct response to geopolitical tensions with China. China has made no secret of its intention to establish a scientific research station on the Moon, and has been ramping up its robotic and human lunar exploration programmes over the last two decades.

The Artemis programme, established in 2017, can be seen as a response to that. It specifically seeks to establish a permanent lunar base with the US at the helm before China — a goal that led US Senator Ted Cruz to describe the situation the US now finds itself in as a “21st-century space race.”

Although the images of the Moon and video footage of the astronauts at work captured during Artemis II have been uplifting, the underlying motivations for the mission have remained largely in the background.

The geopolitical nature of this situation isn’t new, according to Dr Priyanka Dhopade, a researcher in sustainable space engineering at the University of Auckland.