The next generation will be different than the men of the Apollo missions
When astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped from the moon’s surface into his spacecraft in December 1972, he was aware it was the end of an era. His mission, Apollo 17, was the last of the Apollos.
“Take your final look at the valley of Taurus-Littrow, except from orbit,” Cernan said of the view before the craft lifted off. “We’re on our way, Houston!”
And with that, the last person to walk on the moon returned to Earth. No other boots have touched lunar soil in the 50 years since then.
Now, NASA is preparing to go back, and China is on its way too. On November 16, the U.S. Artemis I mission launched to bring the first crew-ready space capsule to the vicinity of the moon since Cernan and his two crewmates left half a century ago.
That spacecraft isn’t carrying any astronauts; the mission was designed to check technology and other systems that will eventually take people to the moon, on Artemis III, no sooner than 2025. This time, NASA says, the intention is to stay longer, to learn how to live on the moon and eventually send people to Mars.
The obvious next question is, who gets to go?
Thanks to social, political and scientific changes over the last 50 years, today’s astronauts are not like the astronauts of the past. They are more diverse in sex, race and field of expertise. The next set of people to walk on the moon will face different challenges and require different skills, temperaments and support systems than the Apollo crews.
And some groups are thinking about how to include people with disabilities in the spacefaring future. Preparing for a more permanent human presence in space will require rethinking the right stuff. Future lunar crews may reflect our lives on Earth more faithfully, making space for everyone.
Becoming an astronaut
NASA has declared that upcoming missions to the moon will include a woman and a person of color, setting two firsts for lunar astronauts.
The next visitors to the moon haven’t been selected yet. But there are only about 50 people to choose from. The 43 active astronauts and 10 astronaut candidates, who are still in training, come from a variety of backgrounds. The list includes medical doctors, military pilots, geologists, microbiologists, engineers and others. Of NASA’s active astronauts, about 37 percent are women.
“The astronaut corps is, of course, NASA’s most visible workforce,” says Lori Garver, who was NASA’s deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013. “Because of that, NASA has, I think, a responsibility to have an astronaut corps that reflects the nation.”
Modern astronauts are already different from those of Apollo. For its first class of astronauts in 1959, NASA recruited military fighter pilots shorter than 5 feet, 11 inches (because of the tight space in the Mercury space capsule). At the time, all military test pilots were white men, so all astronauts were too.
NASA recruited its first class of “scientist-astronauts” in 1964. The move drew criticism from pilots. In an interview, Cernan — who shared his spot on Apollo 17 with the only geologist to walk on the moon, Harrison Schmitt — called science “a parasite” on the moon program. “Science is not the reason we learned to fly,” he griped. Cernan later referred to Schmitt as “Dr. Rock” and worried that he wouldn’t be able to get out of a tough spot on his own.
But according to NASA’s mission report, Apollo 17 was “the most productive and trouble-free manned mission.” It “demonstrated the practicality of training scientists to become qualified astronauts.”
Today, 42 percent of NASA’s active astronauts have a research science or medicine background, in fields ranging from oceanography to physics.
Counterintuitively, though, NASA’s definition of “astronaut” doesn’t require going to space. Once you’ve made it through the strenuous and selective application and training process, you’re a member of the astronaut corps, whether you leave Earth or not.
The first step in applying to be an astronaut is “unnervingly underwhelming,” says geobiologist Zena Cardman, who joined the astronaut corps in 2017 but has not yet been to space. “You submit a very short resume to USAJobs.gov, and then you wait for a long time,” she says. (Full disclosure: I applied to the astronaut program myself in 2012. I kept the rejection postcard for years.)
The minimum requirements for applying are being a U.S. citizen, having a master’s degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or math, and two years of professional experience, including teaching or graduate school. Pilots can substitute the two years of experience with 1,000 hours of jet-flying experience. Candidates who make it through that first round travel to Houston for a two-round interview process.
“What we’re looking for in these first few Artemis missions … first and foremost, is technical expertise,” astronaut Reid Wiseman, chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, said in a news briefing on August 5. A lot of those desired skills revolve around acquiring resources to support long stays.
Artemis III plans to send people to the lunar south pole, which could be a reasonable place to put a long-term base. It has regions that will be in sunlight for the entire 6.5-day mission. The light will help generate energy from solar power. And it has regions in permanent shadow that host pockets of water ice, which could be used for water and fuel for human settlements.
The possibility of finding and using resources on the moon is part of why science backgrounds, especially in geology, are now more important for astronauts. But in the astronaut corps, everyone does everything, Cardman says. Her background is in geology and microbiology. She’s done fieldwork in Antarctica, the Arctic, underground caves and on ocean research vessels. Space “seemed like the ultimate fieldwork endeavor,” she says.
To round out her skills, she’s getting trained in engineering and aviation, and her test pilot colleagues are learning geoscience. “We will have roles, but we won’t be siloed,” she says.