CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Apollo moonshots are a tough act to follow, even after all this time.As four astronauts get set to blast off on humanity’s first trip to the moon in more than half a century, comparisons between Apollo and NASA’s new Artemis program are inevitable.The world’s first lunar visitors orbited the moon on Apollo 8. The Artemis II crew will play it safe and zip around the moon in an out-and-back slingshot.AdvertisementAdvertisementAnother key difference: Artemis reflects more of society, with a woman, person of color and Canadian rocketing away.While Artemis builds on Apollo and pays homage to it, “there is no way we could be that same mission or ever hope to even be,” said NASA astronaut Christina Koch, part of the Artemis II crew.Here’s the lowdown on Apollo vs. Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, as NASA targets the first six days of April for liftoff.Run-up to the moonIt took NASA just eight years to go from putting its first astronaut in space to putting Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969, beating President John Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline.AdvertisementAdvertisement“The Apollo program still just absolutely blows me away,” said Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency,Artemis has progressed much more slowly, after decades of indecision and flip-flopping between the moon and Mars as the next grand destination. NASA’s new moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, has soared only once in a test flight without anyone on board more than three years ago.This plodding approach is why NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman overhauled the Artemis program in February. Keen to emulate Apollo, he added a mission between the upcoming Artemis II mission and the moon landing that’s now shifted to Artemis IV in 2028.During next year’s revamped Artemis III, astronauts will stick closer to home the same way Apollo 9 did in 1969. Instead of attempting a moon landing as originally envisioned, they will practice docking their Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with one or both lunar landers under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The rival companies are accelerating work on their landers in a bid to be first.Political rivalriesThe Soviets were America’s fierce rivals during Apollo, but their moon rockets kept exploding at liftoff and they eventually gave up. Now the Chinese are the competition.AdvertisementAdvertisementChina already has landed robotic spacecraft on the moon’s far side — the only nation to achieve that — and is scrambling to land astronauts near the lunar south pole by 2030.NASA is aiming for the same polar region, where shadowed craters are thought to hold vast amounts of ice that could provide drinking water and rocket fuel. Like his predecessor Bill Nelson, Isaacman is determined to beat China to the finish line and win this second space race.Moon rocketApollo’s Saturn V rockets stood 363 feet (110 meters), with five first-stage engines. The Artemis SLS rocket comes in at 322 feet (98 meters) but packs more liftoff thrust with its four main engines and two strap-on boosters.All but one Saturn V rocket soared from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39-A, now leased by SpaceX. NASA will use neighboring pad 39-B for all SLS flights. While the Saturn V launched twice before carrying astronauts, the SLS has flown only once. Hydrogen fuel leaks delayed the SLS debut in 2022 …
