When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Humanity hasn’t been to the moon’s neighborhood since Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis 2 will change that just a few days from now. | Credit: NASAFor the first time in more than half a century, humanity is on its way to the moon.NASA’s Artemis 2 mission began heading toward lunar realms on Thursday evening (April 2), after its Orion capsule aced an engine burn that took it out of Earth orbit.The four Artemis 2 astronauts are following a trail left by NASA’s Apollo program, which last sent people to the moon in December 1972. This begs the question: Why has it taken us so long to go back?NASA shared this Artemis 2 photo on April 3, 2026, a day after the mission left Earth orbit and headed toward the moon. | Credit: NASA/Reid WisemanA different timeThe short answer is, times have changed. Apollo was a product of the Cold War space race. The U.S. believed that winning this race — by beating the Soviet Union to the moon — was a national security imperative.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe space race started in 1957, with a trio of “Sputnik moments.” The first was the Soviet Union’s surprise launch of Sputnik 1, the first-ever artificial satellite, on Oct. 4. A month later, Sputnik 2 sent the first animal to space — a poor pup named Laika, who did not survive the trip.Then, in December of that year, the United States attempted to loft its first satellite, a tiny craft called Vanguard Test Vehicle 3. But the satellite’s rocket exploded on live TV, adding to the United States’ embarrassment and stoking fears that the nation had fallen behind its nuclear-armed rival in a very meaningful way.Savvy people “understood the fact that, if they could put a satellite into orbit, that meant that there’s a pretty good chance that they could drop a weapon pretty much wherever they wanted to,” Ed Stewart, museum curator at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, the official visitor center for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, told Space.com.In the U.S., decision-makers had generally regarded the Soviets as technologically challenged, he added. But the events of late 1957 shattered that perception and focused the attention of American politicians and military officials more sharply on the final frontier.AdvertisementAdvertisement”So, we kind of turn space exploration into the proxy battleground for advancing these technologies that could just as easily have been used to drop military payloads as well as deliver people into space,” Stewart said.The Soviets won the first few laps of the space race; for instance, they also lofted the first person to the final frontier, Yuri Gagarin, in April 1961.But putting boots on the moon became the finis …
