Lisa Grossman writes:

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been gearing up to cover the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. This launch aims to bring humans back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, with an eventual eye toward landing humans on the moon and learning how to live there long-term.

I expected to feel unalloyed excitement for this moment. I’ve been enraptured with space since I was 8 years old. I dreamed of being the first woman to land on Mars and search for alien microbes. I followed that passion to an astronomy degree and a career writing about space, for the joy of sharing my cosmological enthusiasm.

One of the things I love most about space exploration is its inspirational power and its potential as a unifying force. The first moon landing is remembered as a moment when the entire world looked up in simultaneous amazement.

“For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one,” President Richard Nixon said in his phone call to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin after they landed on the moon in 1969.

So in early January, as I eagerly listened to lunar science talks at an astronomy meeting in Arizona, I wondered if Artemis II would invoke the same feeling. We could certainly use it in 2026.

Two days later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed a woman about a mile from my house in Minneapolis.

The woman, Renée Good, was demographically identical to me. We both moved to Minneapolis less than a year ago and had children the same age. She had been observing several of the thousands of ICE agents who inundated Minneapolis under the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge. The largest immigration enforcement deployment in United States’ history, it has been met with ongoing resistance from many Minnesotans.

I came home from the conference to find masked agents in military vests driving around my neighborhood. I witnessed them arrest someone across the street from my house while surrounded by neighbors blowing whistles and crying, “You can’t do this!”

Thousands of protesters filled the parks and streets, enduring frigid temperatures and chemical weapons deployed by federal agents. The situation intensified when immigration officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who had been observing enforcement actions.

My immigrant neighbors hid in their homes with sheets pulled over the windows in a way that reminded me of my Jewish relatives hiding during the Holocaust. My kids were scared. I was scared. It was very hard to think about anything else.

Meanwhile, NASA prepared to launch Artemis II. I sat staring at the draft of my preview story with a hollow feeling in my chest: Who cares about people going to the moon? [Continue reading…]