Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
How do you keep an astronaut healthy? Do missions to the moon move Earth in the right direction? The Indiana Daily Student’s opinion desk’s science columnists muse on NASA’s Artemis II lunar flyby mission.
Artemis II, a four-astronaut mission, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida, on April 1. Its path through space rounds the dark side of the moon before its crew will splash down Friday off the coast of San Diego.
Spencer Schaberg, sophomore, science columnist
When you shoot a team of four into the harsh, irradiated vacuum of space inside a multi-ton capsule with an interior no larger than a garden shed, you can’t afford to take anything for granted — least of all the health of your human projectiles.
With the launch of Artemis II, scientists at NASA took giant leaps — shoutout Neil Armstrong — toward safer deep space travel, not just during spacecraft’s explosive liftoff or fiery reentry, but over the course of the multi-day, peaceful float through the cosmos that makes up the majority of the mission.
Don’t be fooled: The float is not as harmless as it may seem. Cosmic rays and other solar events bombard the astronauts aboard Artemis II with about a millisievert of radiation — the equivalent of 10 chest x-rays — every day they stay in space. Combine that with worsened sleep, a stomach-churning zero-gravity environment and close-quarters living, and you’ve brewed a mean recipe for underpowered immune systems.
Manned missions before Artemis II showed there is still work to do when safeguarding the human body in the great beyond. In 2019, NASA published a study based on data from the International Space Station that found certain viruses, like those behind chicken pox and herpes, often reemerge from their dormant state in spaceborne astronauts. This isn’t how it works for healthy adults planted on terra firma, and the cause remains somewhat of a mystery to NASA.
The problem isn’t just the viruses, either. NASA also identified at least two strains of bacteria that become more harmful in spaceflight. While the Artemis II capsule is kept clean from the worst of the worst, pathogen-wise, when an astronaut’s immunity is weakened, even the most benign microbes can pose a health risk.
To tackle these problems, Artemis II is collecting as much health data as the onboard sensors allow. From blood and saliva sampling to organ-on-a-chip systems and 24/7 vitals monitoring, NASA is mustering every tool at its disposal to understand the risks facing humans’ long-term survival in space.
No matter what the future of space exploration has in store, it will only be possible if we can ensure the wellbeing of the brave souls we blast into the abyss. Thanks to Artemis II, we’re bringing ourselves closer to achieving a basic standard of safety in humanity’s newest frontier.
Odessa Lyon, senior, science columnist
Ecologists use the term fundamental niche to refer to the environmental conditions an organism could possibly live in. All our world’s organisms must exist within their niches — fish in water, trees on land, amphibians and some reptiles and mammals in both — or perish, humans included.
Ascend too high in altitude, and the loss of atmospheric pressure and oxygen will kill you. Dive too far underwater, and the weight of increased pressure will collapse your lungs — not to mention our glaring lack of gills. Humans’ fundamental niche is very clearly defined. So, what’s with NASA’s renewed vigor to travel into space?
The last time humans stepped foot on the moon in 1969 — preceded by similar missions around its far side — the Vietnam War was in full swing. At the time, Apollo 11’s mission was a power play that stemmed from Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union: two kids, greedily grabbing at something that belongs to neither.
If the Artemis II mission to slingshot around the moon marks the beginning of the new Space Race, it begs the question: why are we racing?
The United States’ armed conflict — or war, to any historian — with Iran, reminiscent of the Vietnam War in its frivolity and needless bloodshed, calls into question the motives for Artemis II and ensuing missions. The New York Times’ “Why We Chose to Go Back to the Moon” whittles it down to the same as before, if not worse. One explanation the Times writers offer is the possibility of mining rare and costly Helium-3. But what do we need that for? Oh, right, mainly fusion power plants. Goody! More energy to lavish AI-running supercomputers with. I’d like NASA to consider if we should be mining on the moon when we shouldn’t even be mining on Earth. See: environmental devastation.
The U.S. government also surely wants to touch lunar soil again by 2028 to beat China because it wants to set up outposts at the moon’s southern pole. So what? It’s playground logic. Would it kill the United States, or really all governmental bodies of Earth, not to scratch that perpetual itch to colonize?
Apparently, yes, or we risk an Elon Musk tantrum. Since NASA made that fateful 2006 deal with the devil, SpaceX has slowly subsumed NASA, and, with it, any vision but that of Musk’s Mars colonization program. Sadly, it seems that Musk’s taste for imperialism might spread to other planetary bodies.
“Leave no trace” is the dogma of outdoor exploration, but why isn’t it that of space exploration? If the most innocent explanation for the newest moon mission is the quest for knowledge, why, oh why, can’t we leave our orbital dance partner alone?
Spencer Schaberg (he/him) is a sophomore studying microbiology.
Odessa Lyon (she/her) is a senior studying biology and English, pursuing a minor in European studies.
