Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Artemis explorers at the Moon.
Image credit: NASA

NASA is busy putting its best foot forward in rebooting the Moon via the Artemis program.

Artemis missions, NASA has explained, will build a community on the Moon, drive a new lunar economy, while inspiring a new generation.

NASA released on January 23 the outcomes of its 2023 Moon to Mars Architecture Concept.

Shown here is a rendering of 13 candidate landing regions for Artemis III. Each region is approximately 9.3 by 9.3 miles (15 by 15 kilometers). A landing site is a location within those regions with an approximate 328-foot (100-meter) radius.
Credit: NASA

As for Earth’s partner in gravitational lock, what’s foreseen is lunar infrastructure emplaced over time through “Foundational Exploration” and “Sustained Lunar Evolution” segments.

Starting with the lunar South Pole, future crews can perform multiple missions there, as well as carry out forays to different regions within range of each other.

Putting up the framework

Creating a long-term, self-sustaining habitation on the Moon, NASA says, constitutes a framework for government, industry, academia, and international partners to participate in a robust lunar economy and facilitate science.

Definitely, the Moon is going to become a work in progress.

But how best can we Earthlings keep track of that evolving growth on that celestial site?

Image credit: Christopher Richards, University Communications

For future’s sake…record the past

Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, writer, and artist. He is a research associate at the University of Arizona’s College of Fine Arts and an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute, among his affiliations.

Keats is creator of the “Millennium Camera.” Its purpose is to record the past for future humankind, as well as spur discussion about what current humans can do to influence the future.

In fact, one Millennium Camera is a silent sentinel gazing out across the desert landscape toward the Star Pass neighborhood, West of Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, Arizona – on duty for 1,000 years.

Environmentally-sensitive locations

The Millennium Camera is designed to take a single photograph over a period of one thousand years, Keats explains, revealing changes in the landscape to future generations and motivating people in the present to take responsibility for what future generations will eventually see.

Over the past decade, Millennium Cameras have been installed in several environmentally-sensitive locations in the United States in collaboration with academic institutions including Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.

Image credit: Christopher Richards, University Communications

Additional cameras will be installed on other continents including Europe and Asia in the next several years.

Galactic optimism

“I propose also to install a Millennium Camera on the South Pole of the Moon, overlooking the site where the Artemis Base Camp will be built,” Keats told Inside Outer Space.

Keats said that NASA’s Artemis program emblematizes “galactic optimism” in a time of deep uncertainty on Earth. “It represents a fresh start, and can provide a model for new social dynamics on our home planet, or a launching point for our future elsewhere in the solar system.”

The program also carries significant risk, said Keats, not only of technical failure but also of polluting a near-pristine environment and undermining future opportunities for scientific discovery.

Credit: NASA

Focal point

“Given the range of possible futures, and given that the Artemis Base Camp will be a focus of human attention for centuries to come,” Keats added, “the Millennium Camera has the potential to serve as a focal point for important conversations here on Earth and beyond.”

Keats pointed out that the history of astronomy is a history of observation, made possible with instruments such as the telescope.

“The Millennium Camera falls into this tradition not only as an optical instrument but also as a philosophical instrument,” Keats said. “The image will not be seen for one thousand years. For the next millennium, the camera on the Moon promises to enlarge the human imagination.”

To visit the Millennium Camera website, go to Deep Time Photography at:

https://tumamoc.arizona.edu/arts-and-science