Cinzia

“Cynthia first captured me with her beautiful eyes.” Thus begins the Latin poet of the first century Propertius in the elegies dedicated to his beloved Cynthia. And Cynthia still enchants, as she always has, not only poets but all of us who gaze at the night sky.

Cinzia is the adjective by which the goddess Artemis was called, because she was born from Mount Cinto, she the goddess of the moon. But the adjective attributed to the moon, “cinzia,” also evokes that encircling which our satellite performs around the Earth, as the ancients believed.

With the Artemis mission, the unstoppable process begins that will lead from the exploration to the colonization of outer space by humans. The space adventure is not a matter of strategic dominance, or a demonstration of technological power, or, as some now argue, of commercial exploitation. It is a heritage of all humanity, called to participate in it in an increasingly extensive and engaging way.

The true success of this great endeavor will be to bring into outer space and to other planets not only expert scientists or military personnel but also ordinary human beings, eager to learn and to initiate a new extraterrestrial generation.

To understand the audacity and greatness of this newly begun mission, it is like imagining building a luxury hotel on Everest equipped with every comfort, including saunas and thermal baths. The extra-atmospheric environment is indeed uninhabitable and hostile to living beings.

The effects of microgravity dramatically alter physiology, requiring uncommon preparation and advanced technology equipment. Temperatures are extreme: from -150 °C in shaded areas to +120 °C when exposed to direct sunlight. Additionally, one is subject to the impact of dust and meteoroids, which strike without the filter of the atmosphere, and the effects of cosmic rays on the human body when not adequately shielded are still not fully understood.

The psychological effect of deep space is, on one hand, enchanting and, on the other, confusing: the darkness and silence, along with the loss of the normal rhythm of light that accompanies the transition from day to night, profoundly alter perception. There are no seasons or other phenomena we are accustomed to. And above all, looking at the blue planet, Earth, can have a depersonalizing and almost hypnotic effect.

This mission will last ten days, but the next ones will be longer. When we depart for Mars, it will take about a year to arrive. “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever”: this is the famous quote by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935).

When in 1903 the Wright brothers managed to fly a few meters with their Flyer for a handful of minutes, this unknown teacher from a Russian village was writing a treatise in which he not only hypothesized but made feasible the survival of human beings in extraterrestrial space.

What happens today, and what has happened in the past on our small planet, matters very little compared to the challenge that humanity has been able to take on, despite costs and risks. But if we stop to make these calculations, or to consider prejudices against this or that country or leader, we miserably reduce ourselves to staying grounded, forgetting the task we are destined for.

In an ancient Egyptian papyrus from four thousand years ago, this phrase was found written: “If you turn to the future, it will respond to you.” It is only by questioning the future that we will find the answers. So, for a few days — at least during the Artemis space mission — let’s forget about today’s misfortunes.