Kenneth Chang

Yes.

The biggest goal for the astronauts on this mission is to not die.

And if Artemis II succeeds, NASA can move on to the next steps, which will lead to attempts to land astronauts on the moon in a couple years.

What NASA says is that this time, we're not going to just go there and then forget about it.

That this will be the first step to building a moon base,

A moon base.

Yeah, so that they're going to start putting a power plant, some habitats to allow people to stay there for days, weeks, months.

So at first, it will probably be a scientific research station, much like what we have in Antarctica near the South Pole.

Beyond that, people will start thinking about how we can take advantage of the moon's resources.

They might even start trying to mine valuable materials that could be found there.

such as helium-3.

And what's helium-3, and why do we want to mine it on the Moon?

So helium-3 is a light version of helium, and it's quite rare on Earth.

It's a little bit more prevalent on the Moon's surface, and this is a version of helium that could be very useful in future fusion reactors.

It's also thought to be useful for future quantum computers, which...

people are very excited about because it could be used for artificial intelligence, among other things.

And healing through on Earth costs roughly $3 million a pound.

Wow.

So if you can even get a little bit from the moon, you could probably make a profit.

Yes, they're still speculative, but there are companies who are planning to do things along those lines already.