We’ve already been to the moon, so why are we going again?

On July 20, 1969, the world watched with bated breath as two American astronauts — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — glided across the surface of the moon, with command module pilot Michael Collins watching from above.

It was supposed to usher in a new era: the space age. Humans escaping the “surly bonds of Earth” and expanding out into space.

But after six more missions (including Apollo 13, which famously suffered an accident that precluded them from landing on the lunar surface), humanity’s moon dreams were put to rest following Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Why did it end? Some cite various reasons for this: the costly Vietnam War, the fact that the U.S. had done what it had set out to do (beat the former Soviet Union to the moon) or that public interest had waned. Whatever the reason, it’s been 53 years since humans went anywhere near the moon.

Now, that’s changing with NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, designed to return humans to the lunar surface within the next few years. 

But why bother heading back to the moon? How could that possibly benefit humanity?

“We go for science and we go for basically engineering development. You're doing very difficult things that have never been done before,” said Philip Stooke, professor emeritus and adjunct research professor at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University in London, Ont. “You're developing new techniques. And this is really the whole reason for doing human space flight right back to the beginning.”

The first human lunar test comes with Artemis II, slated to launch in early February. On board will be the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch.

While they won’t be landing on the moon, their 10-day mission will take them around the moon, where the four will travel the farthest any human has ever travelled before. They will test crucial hardware and perform various experiments designed to provide as much information as possible to the next crew for Artemis III.

That mission is slated for 2028, and will see astronauts return to the lunar surface, specifically to the moon’s south pole, a previously unexplored region (there have been a few attempts with landers, with two successful missions).

There’s not just the Artemis program, which has 61 countries involved, that is aiming for the moon. China is hot on NASA’s tail, with plans to have humans on the moon by 2030. Then there’s India: It has plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040. 

The moon is a hot commodity.

This isn’t just about visiting the moon to prove that it can be done. This is about staying on the moon. And there are more than a dozen private companies betting on it being a permanent endeavour.

To some, going to the moon may seem like a frivolous and expensive endeavour and that the money could be best spent in other ways, such as on climate change or poverty.