The latest moon missions are 50 years too late and new space advances from Russia and China show that America needs a resurgence of our space program for the sake of national security.
Article originally published in The Orlando Sentinel
By Robert Weiner and Ting Cui
After a failed lunar landing mission by Peregrine exploded over the Pacific last month, NASA put its hopes on a second spacecraft developed by SpaceX and Intuitive Machines that launched early Thursday morning.
The endeavor, known as the IM-1 moon mission, saw the Nova-C lander named "Odysseus" or "Odie" lift off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:05 am EST on Thursday. If successful, Odie could become the first U.S.-built lunar lander on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 - nearly 52 years ago.
The timing of the Peregrine and Odysseus launches, at 2:18 am EST and 12:57 am EST, respectively, has raised questions. These launches were scheduled during hours when few would tune in. This contrasts a time when The Apollo 11 moon landing captivated an estimated 150 million viewers - even the spectacular Super Bowl LVIII ending drew only 123 million viewers.
NASA announced last month that its Artemis II mission, the latest endeavor in the national space program aimed at returning astronauts to just the moon - not beyond - will be postponed to September 2025 or even 2026 after numerous challenges.
Recent launches are a small step in the right direction - better late than never to get to the moon, Mars, and beyond - but they're not enough. We require a greater commitment from the United States to uphold our leadership in space.
China, Russia, Japan, and India may be laughing at our latest lunar attempts. These four nations have now accomplished successful soft landings on the moon. They could outpace America in returning to the lunar surface and venturing onward to Mars and Venus. Just as in 1961 when Russia first rocketed Yuri Gagarin into orbit and John F. Kennedy committed the U.S. to landing on the moon, the US will feel pressured to catch up.
Long-time aviation specialist Miles O'Brien told CNN on January 8th, as the first unmanned moon-landing mission in 54 years took off, that the earlier moon missions five decades ago were "ahead of our time". This is simply not true. We were never ahead of our time - we didn't send Alan Shepard into space until a month after Yuri Gagarin was already there.
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