MOON — A private U.S lunar lander was expected to touch down on the moon on Thursday afternoon.
If successful, it will be the first successful U.S. lunar lander since the Apollo program. Touch down was expected after 3:30pm CT.
“(A lunar mission) is never a walk in the park,” said Brian Ewenson, executive director of Spaceport Sheboygan. “There have been 50 moon landings, with both manned and un-manned vehicles. 50% have failed.”
Ewenson knows a thing or two about space travel. He spent 25 years training astronauts in NASA’s Space Shuttle program.
“There’s no atmosphere (on the moon),” he told WTMJ’s Wis. Morning News on Thursday. “They need to use retro-rockets all the way to the surface to ensure a successful touch-down.”
There will be economic opportunities for landing on the moon, according to Ewenson.
“There are resources on the moon that are in abundance and rare here on Earth,” he explained. “We’re looking to develop a wider lunar economy. Our future astronauts will not be fighter pilots or test pilots, they will be geologists and miners.”
The Artemis program is scheduled to bring astronauts to the moon beginning in 2027. Space exploration will then expand to Mars, but Ewenson said that will take decades.
“Realistically we’re still 25 to 30 years away (from humans walking on the Red Planet),” Ewenson said. The challenge is not the technology, he explained. The hurdle is keeping humans alive.
“A trip to Mars would be a one-way trip. You can’t tell an astronaut ‘We’re sending you on a mission where you’re 100% not coming back alive.'”
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