Tim Peake and Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock argue Artemis II launch to the Moon is "stepping stone to Mars"

The prospect of a permanent lunar base comes one step closer today, with NASA launching the first manned Moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. For Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock – a self-confessed 'lunatic' born a year before Neil Armstrong made history – Artemis II’s voyage to the far side of the Moon can’t come soon enough.

"My retirement plan is to have an optical telescope on the lunar surface," says the space scientist and Sky at Night presenter. "We’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and now there’s talk of a lunar gateway, the capability of refuelling vessels in orbit around the Moon; it feels as if it’s coming together."

British astronaut Tim Peake is similarly excited: "This is the start of the human journey to spend extended periods of time on another celestial body, and a stepping stone to Mars."

The pair, with US journalist Kristin Fisher, are tracking Artemis II’s ten-day mission in live daily dispatches of their BBC World Service space history podcast 13 Days. The latest series, which kicked off on Monday and is due to wrap up the day after the crew returns, digs deep into the science behind the mission to understand its role in paving the way for a lunar base.

"Having looked retrospectively at key events in space history, it’s exciting to be doing something in real time," says Dame Maggie.

While the crew won’t set foot on the surface, they will travel several thousand miles beyond the Moon – further than anyone before them. But technical difficulties have forced NASA to postpone Artemis II twice from its original February launch. Now it’s added an extra mission next year, to practise docking with a lunar lander, before humans next step onto the Moon with potentially two landings in 2028.

Irrespective of the stress of the delays, can anything really prepare the crews of this and subsequent missions for the experience?

"You can learn the nuts and bolts, but nothing can prepare you for the view or the weightlessness,” says Peake. “Burning those engines and heading off to the Moon, watching Earth disappear to a thumbnail in the window, is mentally another order of magnitude."

Among Artemis II’s crew are the first lunar non-white astronaut, the first woman and the first non-American (a Canadian, at a time when the distinction between the neighbouring nations feels wider than ever).

"The 12 people who’ve landed on the Moon have all been white American guys, which seems like a very narrow band of people," says Dame Maggie. "As a child, I thought I had to become a fighter pilot to stand a chance, but the younger generation can see this is potentially for everyone.

"I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, but when you see our planet from space, you don’t see borders. The world feels fractured right now, and it’s lovely to see the European Space Agency collaborating with the US and Canada. The images of our planet will reflect the work that’s been done to get people out there."

From impact craters to solar flares and ancient lava flows, we’ve learnt a lot more about the Moon in the past half-century. The surface is essentially "a four-billion-year-old museum, a pristine repository of what Earth used to be like," says Peake.

Artemis represents the most sustained approach yet to establishing a staging post to the solar system, a world away from what Dame Maggie calls the “sabre-rattling” one-upmanship of the early space race. Yet its journey over the past quarter-century, through successive US presidents with wildly contrasting agendas, has not been plain sailing.

Peake highlights that around 0.5% of US GDP goes into space research, down from 5% in the Apollo era, while Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have skewed the public’s perception of space exploration as a “billionaires’ playground” rather than a scientific endeavour.

"The involvement of commercial companies is nothing new, but there haven’t always been such large personalities attached to them," he notes.

Dame Maggie, meanwhile, confesses she’s "a little scared" about the risks involved.

"As we take these first wobbly steps into space and further into the solar system, we must get it right, in the name of all humanity. It’s not just for the great and the good, it’s for everybody. The wrong mindset could lead to disaster later."

For Musk in particular, Mars is the prize. While Peake predicts crews will routinely spend six months on the Moon within a decade, he reckons that once the red planet becomes a viable destination, it will forever change how humans deal with the psychological impact of space.

"When you watch Earth disappear until it's no brighter than an ordinary star in the night sky, and you're committed to a three-year mission, that's a quantum leap."

A decade on from his spacewalk, Peake is technically a retired astronaut, though a return to the International Space Station could be on the cards. Could he see himself working on the Moon?

"I’d love to – I don't think it will be too challenging: the Earth is still there in your view, which would ground you while you’re living on another celestial spot."

So, as he watches the flight from his home, is he not a tiny bit... jealous?

He laughs. "I guarantee that every single astronaut who isn’t on that rocket envies that crew. A lunar mission is the highlight of any astronaut’s mission. It’s what we live and work for – and dream about."

Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Tim Peake feature in the BBC World Service 13 Minutes Presents: Artemis II podcast, available every day throughout the mission.

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