New generation of Coloradans inspired by lunar mission, follow Artemis II journey

Humans have not walked on the moon since the original Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. But the Artemis II program could be the inspirational lunar mission for a new generation of Coloradans.

On Wednesday, the Intro to Space class at Metropolitan State University of Denver held a watch party for the Artemis II mission launch.

"I was going to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I was going to go to the moon," said Randy Owen, senior lecturer at MSU Denver.

Growing up watching the Apollo missions, Owen developed a passion for space.

"Fifty years later. We still haven't gone back, so this is really neat. It's finally happening," Owen said.

While he didn't become an astronaut, he did the next best thing, working as a spacecraft engineer for years before becoming a professor at MSU Denver.

"It didn't happen for us. You guys, if you want to, you can," Owen said.

Now, students in his intro to space class get to witness a moon mission themselves.

"We're finally going back to the moon that we haven't really explored in decades," said Nicholas Sagerer, an intro to space teaching assistant.

"This will be my first time ever seeing something like this," said freshman Liv Ortiz.

The astronauts on Artemis II won't walk on the moon, but they're laying the foundation for a permanent NASA presence there. Another Artemis flight is planned for next year, and in 2028, we can expect to see an actual moon landing.

"They're step by step, building up the ability to go do it," Owen said.

This mission will journey around the moon and back, setting a record for farthest distance traveled from Earth.

"It's a big getting back into the space race kind of feeling," Sagerer said. "The idea that there's still so much more to explore, more out there, I think will get people's curiosity piqued."

In two weeks, the students will get to take part in their own launch. As part of this class, they design and build devices called payloads that will be launched with a balloon to altitudes of up to 100,000 feet in the atmosphere, thanks to nonprofit partner Edge of Space Science.

"It's kind of end-to-end missions. The class teaches you how to do a space mission, but in five or six weeks," Owen said. "They write a proposal, they design it, and they build it together, they fly it, they get the data back, they analyze it, and then they tell me, and we talk about it at the end."

"It's just been super interesting to see the kind of payloads that students come up with and experiments that we launch up there," said Sagerer.

When Artemis II launched, it was met with cheers in the classroom. It's a new era in the space race as a new generation looks on.

"It's so cool to know that generations of my family will be able to see this, see us improving," Ortiz said.

"It's really exciting now, because I get to tell the students that 'Some of you could do that," Owen said. "Whatever you want to do, it's wide open out there.'"