Why space is heating up again
By Luka TAKKI
Edited by Dalia Sophia WOLNY
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” As Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on July 20, 1969, he was the first human ever to set foot onto a celestial body beyond Earth, it was a massive milestone and marked the start of a new era in the history of humanity. In 1972, only three years later, the last lunar module descended from the Moon back to Earth, aboard Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last two humans to set foot on the surface of the Moon, so far.
After the last lunar landing everyone believed no human would walk on it ever again, since it seemed to be just a giant dusty desert. The space era was lastly over when the space shuttle program ended in 2008. America, the biggest space nation, had stopped bringing astronauts to space. The only rocket still being launched was the Russian Soyuz, that was even older than the Moon program itself. But even if the two biggest space nations of all time lost their grip on space, something new was coming, this time on the private sector, something space exploration had never seen before.
Four years later in December 2005 Space X, a private space company had successfully launched a rocket into the Earth orbit. But they had something much bigger in mind: their goal was to make rapidly reusable rockets, to dramatically lower the cost of sending cargo and humans into space. Five years later Space X completed a controlled landing with their fully reusable Falcon 9 rocket. They had mastered something that was previously only known from Star Wars.
Shortly after, the space race was in its full swing again but this time there weren’t just the usual two rivals. Many other nations had joined the race including China, European countries with the European space agency (ESA), India, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, south Korea and even Luxembourg with its Luxembourg space agency (LSA). Besides all these nations, space has now developed into an excellent field for start-ups and companies.
Their goal isn’t only to show power, but to harvest valuable resources that are rare or non-existent on Earth, such as helium-3 that is used in nuclear fusions. Establishing a permanent presence is also crucial for astronomers and researchers to learn more about the Moon, the Earth and the Universe itself. The Moon is an excellent place for research because it consists mostly of the same matter as the Earth, and it blocks the radiation produced by humans, such as radio, so that astronomers can look and listen even deeper into the Universe. The Moon can also be used as a stop for future flights between Earth and Mars due to its relatively small gravity, making rockets easier and cheaper to launch from there.
As far as Mars is concerned, being a planet that was a habitable place millions of years ago, with water, an atmosphere and other life essentials, nations and companies hope to find evidence of present or past life there. Furthermore, going to Mars would make humanity multiplanetary. That would be very important, because if humans are all in one place, they can go extinct from one night to another due to a massive catastrophe (Like it happened to the dinosaurs before us). Besides harvesting many resources not available on Earth, nations and
Companies also want to comprehend how Mars became a cold and harsh place like it is today in order to understand how to improve the way we live on our home planet.
As the space race is getting even faster, bigger and more intense, we can only wait for what will happen in the next few years, but one thing is for sure: this time we aren’t only coming to look around, we are coming to stay.