‘Artemis is the first step in journey that will last centuries’: Prof Somak Raychaudhury on New Space Age

Unlike the first space age, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed to plant a flag on the Moon, the Artemis programme marks an irreversible first step in a spacefaring journey that will span centuries as the future of humanity is multiplanetary, says astrophysicist Prof Somak Raychaudhury. In a fact that could very well serve as its mission statement, Artemis II took humanity further into the cosmos than ever before. For 10 days, millions watched four astronauts travel to the Moon, test the science underpinning the future of spacefarin... [4400 chars]