It Took the Nation Long Enough: N.A.S.A. Announces the First Human Flight to the Moon in 52 Years

December 7 to December 19, 1972.

Those are the dates for the final Apollo mission; the last human flight to the Moon and back to Earth.

Slow forward to late, 2024.

That is the time N.A.S.A has announced the first Americans since I had just turned six will journey to the Moon on the Artemis II Mission.

The four-person astronaut crew is Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch from NASA, and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

A lunar landing, the Artemis III mission, with an astronaut crew, is planned for 2025.

Artemis I, an unmanned flight around the Moon, occurred last year.

With the scheduled 2024 flight, Glover and Koch will be the first Black and Female American Astronauts to orbit the lunar surface.

It took the Nation long enough.

52 years from the last mission to the Moon to the planned return in 2024 is a disgrace.

While N.A.S.A. and its private industry partners have made great strides in technological progress for the country and the world over the last century, its failure, along with several Democratic and Republican Presidential Administrations to pursue a more robust Moon and Mars human exploration program, is historic.

Hopefully, the country will not have to wait another 52 years to go to the Moon after 2025.

Hopefully, this lunar mission in 2024 will finally be the first step to taking humanity permanently to the stars.