If anyone can offer advice to the four NASA astronauts scheduled to launch Wednesday on a mission to orbit the moon, it’s Harrison Schmitt.
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Schmitt, 90, left his bootprints on the lunar surface in 1972, as part of Apollo 17 – the last mission in the program, which was the last time humans visited the moon.
NASA’s Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch at 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, aims to usher in a new era of lunar exploration. The team plans to orbit the moon as a step toward landing on the moon in 2028 (similar to how Apollo 8’s moon landing paved the way for Apollo 11).
Schmitt expects the Artemis II astronauts to see some of the same things on Earth that they did more than a century ago.
“Every day, every hour, every minute, it’s something new,” Schmitt said in an interview with NBC News.
As for what he was going to tell the Artemis II crew: “Make sure you get your training down.
A lot has changed since Apollo 17. Schmitt and his crew were part of the space race against the Soviet Union. Today, NASA is competing with China, which hopes to put its astronauts on the moon by 2030.
The Apollo 17 astronauts spent about 13 days in space – more than three of those on the lunar surface. They saw the longest distance traveled on the moon, driving the lunar rover a total of 19 miles. They also collected more geology samples than any other lunar mission, bringing 243 pounds back to Earth.
Schmitt said he will never forget going into lunar orbit in the dark, on the far side of the moon facing away from Earth.
“We were sitting on the east side of the moon, and the sun was just coming up,” Schmitt said. “Going into the darkness of the moon was quite something, because one of the things you see right away is that the moon is illuminated by the light of the earth. There is a blue color to the light.”
The Artemis II astronauts will get a better glimpse of the far side of the moon than the Apollo crew.
“It turns out that it’s about 60 percent of the far side, I think, that hasn’t been seen by the human eye because of the lighting conditions,” said Reid Wiseman, Artemis II’s mission commander, at a press conference on Friday. “Apollo was always looking for that light on the front of the moon so he could land and be able to launch … We’ve seen it in satellite images, but people have never seen that before. That’s cool.”
The end of Apollo 17 represented, for decades, the end of US ambitions to maintain a human presence on the moon. NASA’s budget was cut in the 1970s, more Apollo missions were canceled and the US prioritized work on space stations.
Unlike the Apollo program, NASA’s long-term mission with Artemis goes beyond a short visit to the moon. The space agency hopes to build a lunar base to facilitate long-term landings, and eventually use that base as a stepping stone to Mars.
“It wouldn’t surprise me in anybody’s lifetime to see people there for months and years and actually have a place to live on the moon,” Schmitt said. “Mars is reachable, and I think we will continue.”
Why is he so confident? “We’re human, that’s what we always do,” Schmitt said.
“From the time the human race began in Africa until now, it has been expanding and becoming part of our humanity, our mind,” he said.
When the Apollo 17 crew left the moon, commander Gene Cernan said: “We are leaving as we came, and, God willing, we will return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
If all goes according to plan, Artemis II will be a milestone in the quest to make that return. On the sixth day of their mission, the crew is expected to come within 6,000 miles of the lunar surface. Their orbit around the moon will take them farther from Earth than anyone has ever been.
“These types of national airplanes are very important,” Schmitt said. “China is as keen to rule space as it is to rule the world. So it’s a national effort, and it needs to be done well and in the right way.”
