One big step toward returning to the moon
Ex-astronaut, Lehigh University professor shares excitement for Artemis launch
Like a boy excited for Santa Claus’ arrival, Terry Hart got up early Wednesday to watch the smooth launch of Artemis, NASA’s newest space foray to the moon.
A mother might forgive Hart; after all, the 76-year-old Lehigh University professor once ventured into space on the Challenger space shuttle during the 1980s. And NASA’s 1:47 a.m. launch of Artemis marked the first time in almost 50 years the space agency sent a rocket toward the moon since Project Apollo, when 12 astronauts walked on the lunar surface from 1969-72.
Artemis blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard its spacecraft called Orion, bringing the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.
If all goes well during the $4.1 billion, three-week flight, the crew capsule will be propelled into a wide orbit around the moon and then return to Earth with a Pacific splashdown in December.
As a former astronaut, Hart has earned perks, like NASA briefings, about missions such as Artemis, up to knowing the dummies are called “moonequins.”
“They are fully instrumented [with sensors], so they are recording temperatures, pressures, cosmic radiation readings ... that would be experienced by a crew member,” he said.
The Artemis I mission aims to ensure Orion can work in space
and deliver astronauts safely back to Earth. It will fly farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed for humans has flown before, a distance of 280,000 miles from Earth, a journey of about 40 days around the moon and back.
Not everyone has been a fan of America’s space program through the years, with the government’s lapsing in funding and lunar missions until recently.
But Hart, who lives in Lower Saucon Township, is like many other people who believe in the benefits of exploring space.
“I think the real benefit,” Hart said, “is maybe 200 years from now, historians will look back on man’s effort in space, and conclude the best benefit is to look at the planet together, and we need to take care of each other.
“I’m hoping space will be a unifying factor.”
Hart was one of 35 people chosen by NASA in 1978 for the first group of space shuttle astronauts known as Group Eight. When NASA’s 11th space shuttle mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 6, 1984, Hart was aboard the STS 41-C Challenger.
The crew logged 168 hours in orbit above Earth as they became the first astronauts to repair a satellite from the shuttle. Hart operated the remote manipulator system that caught the Solar Maximum Satellite for repairs.
Hart didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut as a boy; he said his mother named him for Terry Lee, lead character and a pilot in the 20th century comic strip Terry and the Pirates. And his life path made it a natural progression to follow adventure.
He studied engineering at Lehigh, then, after graduation, joined the Air Force Reserve and began working at Bell Laboratories.
On a whim, he applied when NASA solicited applications for astronauts. He thought maybe he would get to go through the testing.
A mechanical and electrical engineer, and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Hart has been teaching at Lehigh since 2006 and has lived in the Lehigh Valley since 2001.
NASA’s Artemis lunar-exploration program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister, aims to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight, in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025.
Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s. But many hurdles need to be cleared. The Orion capsule will take astronauts only to lunar orbit, not the surface.