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Nasa artemis6/17/2023 ![]() Within the next one or two decades, robotic exploration of the Martian surface could be almost entirely autonomous, with human presence offering little advantage. Improvements in sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) will further enable the robots themselves to identify particularly interesting sites, from which to gather samples for return to Earth. The benefits of roboticsĪdvances in robotic exploration are exemplified by the suite of rovers on Mars, where Perseverance, Nasa’s latest prospector, can drive itself through rocky terrain with only limited guidance from Earth. This is unlike its SpaceX competitor “ Starship”, which enables the company to recover and the reuse the first stage. Each launch therefore carries an estimated cost of between $2 billion (£1.7 billion) and $4 billion. Like its predecessors, the Artemis booster combines liquid hydrogen and oxygen to create enormous lifting power before falling into the ocean, never to be used again. The Artemis mission is using Nasa’s brand new Space Launch System, which is the most powerful rocket ever – similar in design to the Saturn V rockets that sent a dozen Apollo astronauts to the Moon. In our recent book “ The End of Astronauts”, Donald Goldsmith and I argue that these changes weaken the case for the project. Moreover, superpower rivalry can no longer justify massive expenditure, as in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The most relevant differences between the Apollo era and the mid-2020s are an amazing improvement in computer power and robotics. The US-led Artemis programme, however, aims to return humans to the Moon this decade – with Artemis 1 on its way back to Earth as part of its first test flight, going around the Moon. ![]() None has, in fact, ventured more than a few hundred kilometres from Earth. ![]() Since then, hundreds of astronauts have been launched into space but mainly to the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. And just three years later, the last Apollo astronauts left our celestial neighbour. Neil Armstrong took his historic “one small step” on the Moon in 1969.
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