We will walk on the moon

In December, it will be 50 years since men walked on the moon for the last time, during the mission Apollo 17. But soon, thanks ArtemisWe will walk there again. And this time, it will be the first step… to Mars. At the time of this writing, we are still waiting for the first rocket to take off. With no one on board, it has to pass close to the moon, leave some satellites there in orbit, and then come back. Artemis 2 will take the same flight, but with humans on board. Then with Artemis 3 we will land on the roof. In 2025, if all goes well.

The ultimate goal is to install a space station in lunar orbit, a gateway, which will serve as a springboard for missions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system.

are you excited? Or questionable, perhaps? Or ask yourself, “What’s the point?” »

back to space

Technology is not something that gets discovered and then stays in the memory of humanity forever. technology tool. And if you don’t use it, it disappears.

In the documentary Return to Space (2022) on Netflix, we follow Elon Musk and SpaceX’s efforts to send American astronauts to the International Space Station. Because since he retired Space ship In 2011, the Americans relied on the Soyuz shuttle and the Russians to send their astronauts into space.

However, space exploration has forced us to devise a host of very useful technologies here on Earth, from your phone’s camera to LEDs.

The technology for getting to and from the Moon has already disappeared. We have to reinvent it with Artemis. And who knows what discoveries we’ll make along the way?

Search the stars

With the new telescope James Webb, we can look further than ever before into the universe and its history, to the first galaxies that formed. But what amazes me most is his ability to look at the exoplanets in our galaxy.

As of August 1, we’ve detected 5,125 of these planets orbiting a star other than our sun. And the more I looked, the more I found. Recently, a team from Quebec discovered an ocean planet made up of 10% to 25% water. Earth contains less than 1% water. This exoplanet is 100 light years away.

Perhaps we will soon discover evidence of life elsewhere. First. And I don’t know what would be more terrifying.

(finished) living together

The point is, the universe is huge and full of secrets. We are just beginning to look up at the sky. In the meantime, it is difficult for us to live together on our fragile little planet. We forget that this thin layer of air, the atmosphere, into which we now inject 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, is the only thing that separates us from the cold, indifferent nothingness of the universe.

To survive in space, you have to realize that it is not “us against us”, but “we against extinction”. We will have to work together.

As such, the International Space Station is a great example of international cooperation. Since the year 2000, there has always been at least one human orbiting the Earth. You can even explore it on video, thanks to US astronaut Steve Swanson’s detailed tour available on YouTube, for example.

But this space station, which can be seen in the evening among the stars, is stuck to the Earth. On a cosmic scale, it’s just a step up to the front porch. The moon is barely the bottom of our backyard. Its light takes about 1.3 seconds to reach us. The sun is 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

While we wait to return to the moon, listen to the documentary Apollo 11 (2019), the first time we went there. Composed entirely of archival footage from that era, it is a unique historical journey. I can’t imagine the feeling of seeing these images come alive, in 1969, on a small black and white TV.

I can’t wait to see the moon’s surface in high definition in a few years.