For thousands of years, people have dreamed of being able to take a journey into the infinite vastness of the universe while looking up at the sky. Even in ancient times, some scholars fantasized about traveling to the moon or planets.
The moon is just making a comeback with NASA's newly planned Artemis mission. The last person on Earth's satellite so far was Eugene Cernan with the Apollo 17 mission. A moon landing is planned for 2024. NASA wants to bring astronauts to the moon again for the first time with giant SLS rockets and an Orion space capsule. Soon they plan to be permanently present on the moon to prepare flights to Mars. They have the idea to construct a space station in the lunar orbit and want to use a shuttle service from there to the lunar surface.
The lunar module is one of the iconographic images that have become engraved in the collective memory of humanity. Anne Wölk's painting "Apollo 16" shows the lunar module Orion, which landed on our moon in 1972. Brightly lit by the sun, the lander stands in the gray moondust. The great blackness of space spreads out behind it, from which isolated stars twinkle. Apollo 16 was the tenth human-crewed mission in NASA's lunar flight program. For the first time, the lunar highlands have been a target, a cratered and ancient part of the lunar front. Previous missions had landed in or near the lunar seas. The crew brought back 95.8 kg of moon rock from this flight. You can view some rock samples at the "Nördlinger Rieskrater Museum." "The Nördlinger" Ries is an old meteorite crater in southern Germany engineers have used to prepare for the moon landings.
