Artemis I: Putting humans back on the moon and why it’s taken so long

The last person to walk on our nearest neighbour was 50 years ago. Mick O’Hare looks at why Nasa thinks the time is right again

Buzz Aldrin is photographed by Neil Armstrong during the first moon landing in 1969 (Getty)

Plenty of people can name the first human to walk on the moon, but how many can name the last? Eugene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface at 17.54EST on 14 December 1972 and climbed the ladder to join his fellow astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt already inside Challenger, Apollo 17’s lunar module. The hatch swung shut behind them. Nobody has walked on the moon since.

Now, it seems, we are returning. Nasa’s Artemis programme aims to put a human on the moon in 2025. For space nuts, it’s exciting times once again. But why has there been a 50-year hiatus (and counting) between Apollo 17 and Artemis? Why was the Apollo programme – one of humanity’s greatest technological achievements whose apotheosis saw Neil Armstrong become the first person to walk on the moon – curtailed? Perhaps more significantly, why has there been no imperative to return in the intervening five decades?

Apollo was a product of its time. And that time was the Cold War as the United States and the Soviet Union vied for the political affections and affiliations of the rest of the planet. In truth, perhaps the most astonishing part of the Apollo story is that the US, having landed Armstrong and his colleague Buzz Aldrin on the moon in Apollo 11 in July 1969, bothered sending anybody else. Another five launches would take 10 more astronauts to our nearest neighbour. To politicians in Congress, these later missions counted for very little. Apollo 11 had achieved its aim: beating the Soviet Union to the moon. Job done.