If I say Halo, many will come to mind the video game of Bungie Studios, but it is also another thing, always with a space theme, and made by Italy. Not a video game. In fact, Halo is the acronym for Habital and Logistic Outpost, a shell in which the astronauts in orbit will be around the moon in the Artemis mission, and at the moment is located in Turin, in the Thales Alenia Space (Thales-Leonardo) plants, to the avant -garde in the pressurized modules. Halo is one of the five modules that will form the Gateway Lunar Space Station.
The first artemis launch is programmed by NASA for 2027, for the first time there will be a human outpost first around the Moon, and then on the Moon, more or less as in space 1999 (mythical science fiction series of 1973, we will arrive right there , only that the years always make mistakes, directors keep wide with the times when you anticipate the events …).
Important, in the Artemis program, the participation of the Italian Space Agency, and in general the fulfillment of a project that, as it was for the construction of the ISS, is international: in Artemis there are Europe, the United States, Japan, and the space center of the United Arab Emirates. Giampiero di Paolo, delegated habitator of Thales Alenia Space Italia, underlines precisely “the strategic importance of international cooperation in this new era of space exploration”.
Unlike what happened during the Cold War, with the competition between the USA and the USSR for the conquest of the Moon: only one of the two superpowers could have done it. By the way, I answer a question that is often asked by lunacompristas: why have we never returned to the moon? Simply because it was very expensive, and there was no more need, the American flag had been planted, and the subsequent Apollo missions more could not do.
The Artemis project is more ambitious, and the collaboration of the excellence of many countries is necessary. On the other hand, astronauts of all nationalities met on the same international space station. In short, it seems that in space we agree more than on earth.