During the cold war’s space race, the Apollo moon missions were driven by the need to prove American superiority. Having made that political and technological point with the 1969 moon landing, the contest between Moscow and Washington petered out. A new dash across the skies kicks off in 2026, reigniting geopolitical competition under the guise of “peaceful exploration”. The moon’s south pole is emerging as the most valuable real estate in the solar system, offering “peaks of eternal light” for solar arrays and ice deposits in craters shielded from the sun. The…
Tag: Mars
Above and beyond: key events in 2022 that shaped space exploration
The year has been a blast in space exploration, from Nasa’s big step in returning to moon missions, to glimpses at the origins of the universe and hope that humanity could survive the doomsday scenario of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. These are the events that shaped 2022 in space advances: Back to the moon Nasa hadn’t sent a crew-capable spacecraft to the moon for half a century when Artemis 1 blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in November. Atop the mighty Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket…