Blue Origin · Artemis Program · China · MIT Technology Review
The role of the astronaut is in flux
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When the four astronauts on board NASA’s Artemis II swung around the moon earlier this year, they set a new record for the farthest humans have ever ventured from Earth, surpassing the distance set by Apollo 13 in 1972 by some 4,000 miles.
Key facts
- When the four astronauts on board NASA’s Artemis II swung around the moon earlier this year, they set a new record for the farthest humans have ever ventured from Earth, surpassing the distance set
- Meanwhile, Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos, has ferried more than 80 civilians on brief flights into suborbital space, including Star Trek icon William Shatner; pop star Katy Perry
- While no space mission can live up to the historic touchdown of Apollo 11—a spectacle that 20% of the world population watched live—Artemis II still attracted massive public interest
- Take, for example, the intense backlash to the all-female Blue Origin mission that flew celebrity passengers like Perry, journalist Gayle King, Bezos’s now-wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, and several
Summary
While no space mission can live up to the historic touchdown of Apollo 11—a spectacle that 20% of the world population watched live—Artemis II still attracted massive public interest. The expedition is only the first in a planned series of ambitious missions. But some overarching questions about this new era of space exploration linger, including perhaps the most existential one of all: What’s the point? Since the dawn of human spaceflight, this line of questioning has been met with countless answers.