After Artemis II, the Moon is back in focus

The Moon has become strategically and scientifically invaluable. It is emerging as a pristine, fiscally viable scientific stage

- Somak Raychaudhury

The world held its breath last week, as four astronauts were hurtling back toward a vast blue ocean, after entering the atmosphere.

NASA’s Artemis II crew — comprising Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, after their historic 10-day journey, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California in the early hours of (Indian time) April 11, 2026. Having just completed a flawless free-return trajectory around the Moon, this mission marks the first time humanity has ventured into the lunar vicinity in over half a century.

But as we watch these space-farers return from the farthest distance humans have ever travelled from Earth, a question keeps cropping up: Why are we going back to the Moon?

This is not a repeat of Apollo. The Apollo missions of the 1960s and ‘70s were born of a geopolitical sprint—a dash to plant flags, collect rocks, and quickly return home. Its main goal was summarised by US President John F Kennedy's famous speech of September 12, 1962, delivered in his inimitable Boston accent “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” They used the Saturn rockets to directly hurtle to the Moon in three daysneeding a lot of power, and lots of fuel. The six Apollo Moon landings ended with the mission. They did not lead to more activity on the Moon.

Artemis, by contrast, is a meticulously planned marathon. The format of the Artemis mission is similar: First, unmanned probes to the Moon, then a Moon orbiter with people, before people land on the Moon. In the 1960s, the Apollo spacecraft did not even have computers.