ATLANTA — The crew of the Artemis II is on its way back to Earth after a spectacular lunar flyby. Rocket scientists at Georgia Tech are monitoring every minute of the 10-day mission.
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You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be excited about the future of space exploration, but at Georgia Tech Space Institute, it certainly helps.
“The pale blue dot in the middle of the vast blackness, accompanied by the moon in front, it’s just astonishing to see,” said Jud Ready, Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Space Institute.
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That sense of awe is building as NASA prepares for Artemis II, a 10-day manned mission that will send astronauts around the moon.
Researchers at Georgia Tech are playing a major role in the Artemis program. Teams are not only contributing to the mission itself. Still, they are also working on technology that could shape the future of lunar exploration, including solar cells developed on campus that may one day be transported to the moon’s surface.
For Ready, the mission is especially meaningful. He was just two years old the last time astronauts walked on the moon during the Apollo missions.
Now, he says, a new era is about to begin.
“Ultimately, hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people will go,” Ready said. “The next four or five will likely happen in the 2028 to 2029 timeframe.”
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