While there’s half a century since humans landed on the Moon, the Artemis program plans to bring back astronauts to our natural satellite. There had been a lot of speculations and conspiracy theories about why NASA didn’t return to the Moon for such a long time. One of them is that humans encountered hostile alien life forms that scared them away.
While there’s no certainty that there are aliens living on the Moon or not, one thing’s for sure: yesterday (April 11) NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary for its Apollo 13 mission.
“Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
This is a famous phrase uttered by Commander Jim Lovell of the Apollo 13 mission. The number 13 seems to have carried bad luck for the astronomers, some superstitious people might say. The mission was destined to take a crew to the Moon, but it failed. However, NASA called it a ‘successful failure’, because the crewmembers managed to safely return home thanks to the good work of the ground crew from Mission Control.
How is NASA celebrating
The space agency has released a documentary that presents video recordings from the 50-years-old mission. It’s called ‘Apollo 13: Home Safe‘, and it includes an interview with Lovell and discussions with other astronauts.
If it all goes according to the plan, humans will return to the Moon by 2024 through the Artemis program. With a fabulous cost of $35 billion, the project involves the work of NASA, U.S. commercial spaceflight companies, and other partners like the European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Australian Space Agency (ASA).
The Artemis program is expected to send a man and a woman on our natural satellite, and it can also be considered part of an even more ambitious plan of sending humans to Mars for the first time in history.
