RETURN TO THE FINAL FRONTIER MARION MCMULLEN
LOOKS AT HOW MANKIND IS HEADING OUT INTO SPACE ONCE AGAIN
1 British Paralympic sprinter John Mcfall, right, could be the first disabled person to go into space after being selected by the European Space Agency to join its prestigious training programme. John, who is also a medical doctor, lost his right leg in a motorbike accident when he was 19.
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More than 22,500 people applied for the new astronaut training programme. Among those who have just been selected are British astronomer Rosemary Coogan, pictured below, and Uk-born Meganne Christian who has been picked as a member of the ESA’S astronaut reserve.
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Tim Peake was among those selected during the ESA’S last call for astronauts in 2008. He spent six months on the International Space Station and became the first Brit to walk in space. He said: “Space has an ability to inspire and educate future generations.”
4 Man could be living on the Moon before the end of the decade, leading NASA official Howard Hu said this month following the successful launch of the Artemis rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The uncrewed mission around the Moon will pave the way for a crewed flight test and future human lunar exploration. 5
Named after the Greek goddess of the Moon and sister to the god Apollo, the Artemis programme will see the construction of the Lunar Gateway (artist’s impression below) – a new space station for astronauts.
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The UK’S space sector, as a whole, has trebled in size to £14.8 billion a year since 2010 and has set a target of achieving a 10% share of the global market by 2030. Melissa Thorpe, Head of Spaceport Cornwall, recently posed with Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 carrier plane Cosmic Girl, above, designed to carry a rocket named Launcherone to release small satellites.
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A crewed flight into space is scheduled for 2024. The last manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972. The crew included Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans.
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Billionaire Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company Spacex is developing a vehicle to take humans to Mars and he has spoken of his dream to colonise the red planet. Sir Richard Branson has also journeyed to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.
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Star Trek’s William Shatner was 90 when he became the oldest person to travel to space after he blasted off in a rocket built by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space travel company last year. He said: “It really hit home how much we don’t know and how we’re gambling with our planet.” 10
There’s a lot of space to explore. NASA’S £8.4 billion Webb Space Telescope, pictured above, is the world’s largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space. It is in a solar orbit a million miles from Earth and has already been finding early galaxies previously hidden from view.