Five decades after Apollo: the new race to the Moon.

When the crew of Apollo 17 left the Moon in December 1972, few suspected that no human would set foot again on it for more than five decades. The reasons were not only technical: after the victory in the race with the Soviet Union, the political will in Washington quickly faded, and the budget of NASA was drastically cut. Today, however, the Moon is again at the centre of attention, with not only state agencies but also private companies competing for it.

At the heart of American ambitions is the programme Artemis, named after the twin sister of Apollo. The first mission without a crew, in which the capsule Orion orbited the Moon in 2022, is considered a success, although the heat shield was damaged more than expected on re-entry. The plan includes a flight with four astronauts around the Moon, and then a landing near the south pole. However, the programme has been postponed several times, and its costs, which according to estimates amount to tens of billions of dollars, regularly draw criticism in Congress. Critics argue that the same funds could be invested more efficiently in robotic missions, while supporters believe that only the presence of humans enables real scientific and technological breakthroughs.

Artemis is not an exclusively American undertaking: the European Space Agency is building the service module of the capsule Orion, without which the crew would have neither propulsion nor electricity, water or oxygen. At the same time, more than 50 states have signed the Artemis Accords, which are to establish common rules for the peaceful exploration of space, although critics see in them above all an attempt by Washington to impose its own standards.

Meanwhile, China is pursuing its own lunar programme, which has achieved a series of impressive successes in recent years. In 2019 the probe Chang'e 4 became the first craft to soft-land on the far side of the Moon, and in 2024 the mission Chang'e 6 brought rock samples from there to Earth. Beijing has announced that it wants to send its own taikonauts to the Moon by 2030 and later, together with Russia, to build a permanent research station. So it is no surprise that many observers speak of a new space race, which, unlike the one from the Cold War, is not only about prestige, but also about access to resources.

The resources also explain why almost all planned missions are aimed at the south pole. In the deep craters around the pole, whose floors sunlight never reaches, temperatures drop below minus 200 degrees Celsius. Scientists suspect that ice has accumulated in these so-called permanently shadowed regions over billions of years, most likely brought by comets and asteroids. If this ice really exists in sufficient quantities, drinking water and breathable oxygen could be obtained from it, but also hydrogen and oxygen as rocket fuel. In this way the Moon could become a kind of supply station, from which more distant missions would be prepared, which would significantly reduce costs, as every kilogram launched from Earth is extremely expensive.

In the long term, however, the eyes of the space agencies are set on Mars, for whose exploration the Moon is meant to serve as a testing ground. On the Moon life support systems, new propulsion technologies and construction methods are to be tested before people set off on a journey that would take several months in each direction. The key question here is whether political support and funding will remain stable for longer than one election cycle, because previous programmes were often stopped or reshaped with each new administration. It is still open whether people will set foot on Mars in the coming decades, but one thing is almost certain: the road there leads via the Moon.