For more than 50 years, human spaceflight has been defined by distance. Since Apollo 17, we have remained close to Earth, while our robots ventured outward—mapping, sampling, and photographing the surfaces of other worlds. Orbiters traced atmospheres. Rovers crossed alien terrain. Probes traveled billions of miles, sending back data that transformed how we understand the solar system.
Now, with Artemis II, that era is beginning to shift. For the first time in decades, humans have left Earth’s orbit, traveled into deep space, and swung around the Moon.
All of this has caused Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University, to begin to wonder at the stars in a different way. What happens when humans return to those distant vantage points themselves? What do we notice that instruments cannot? And what does it mean to become, once again, a species that sees other worlds not just through data, but directly?
