\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t The Argentine government recently announced that the country will participate in NASA\u2019s Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The mission will launch five small satellites from NASA\u2019s international partners, including Atenea, which was developed in Argentina.<\/p>\n
President Javier Milei held up Argentina\u2019s spot in the moon mission as proof of the country\u2019s technological prowess and vindication of his \u201cefficient\u201d allotment of resources. The message did not go down well among the scientists themselves: Atenea was developed by the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE), a government agency suffering from Milei\u2019s massive cuts to science.<\/p>\n
The mission Artemis II is a planned 10-day lunar spaceflight mission, led by NASA and scheduled for February 6. In the mission, a rocket will carry four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth. While they will not land on the moon, the flight will take the crew farther from Earth than any previous human mission.<\/p>\n
Atenea, the Argentine satellite, is part of a technology demonstration mission developed by the Argentine Space Agency, aimed at the agile and low-cost production of small satellites for Earth observation and space exploration. The Argentine microsatellite will be put aboard the rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/p>\n
The Atenea is a so-called CubeSat measuring around 30 cm x 20 cm x 20 cm. Its functions include measuring radiation doses in low and deep orbits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be held in the Artemis rocket, in a small cabin,\u201d said Emiliano Baum, who is head of IT for CONAE\u2019s Earth stations. \u201cWhen it reaches 70,000 kilometers from Earth, it will be pushed into space. For 14 hours, it will float in orbit and Argentina will obtain data from that CubeSat for 12 hours.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baum\u2019s area will receive Atenea\u2019s data while it\u2019s flying. \u201cThere are a lot of challenges involved in receiving it. The satellite will send a signal every 15 seconds and then cut out. So it will be difficult even to locate it. Of those 12 hours, we don\u2019t know how long we will be able to receive information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ra\u00fal Kulichevsky, Executive and Technical Director of CONAE, said in a statement that \u201cCONAE and NASA have a long and fruitful history of collaboration, spanning more than 30 years.\u201d He added that being selected for the Artemis II demonstrates that Argentina\u2019s \u201ctechnical and operational capabilities are at the highest international level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Unnecessary\u2019 social sciences spending However, to scientists involved in the mission, Milei\u2019s celebration of the project left a bitter taste.<\/p>\n
The president said in a statement that \u201ctechnological development and research into strategic issues are the priorities for this administration\u2019s investment in science, while resources are made more efficient by eliminating unnecessary spending in social or political areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, according to Gonzalo Sanz Cerbino, a union representative for Conicet research council, that is not true. \u201cOne thing that characterizes the situation of the Argentine scientific and technological system since Javier Milei took office is the almost total and complete funding of all areas of scientific knowledge,\u201d he told the Herald.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMilei is not taking resources from certain areas to finance others that the government considers strategic,\u201d he said, adding that hard sciences, \u201cwhich need greater investment for things to function and for equipment to be maintained, end up being the most affected\u201d by the administration\u2019s cuts.<\/p>\n
That includes the space program that created the satellite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have lost more than 30% of the budget so far, and the budget presented for 2026 was 57% lower than the budget we obtained in 2025,\u201d said Baum, who is also the CONAE\u2019s union representative.<\/p>\n
The cuts Since Milei took office, the budget for the country\u2019s scientific institutions fell dramatically.<\/p>\n
Baum emphasized that the Atenea project is relatively cheap, and that it was approved before Milei took office. Moreover, he said that CONEA\u2019s other satellite projects \u2014 Tronador and SAOCOM 2 \u2014 were dismantled by the Milei administration.<\/p>\n
For Baum, the Artemis mission represents a \u201cnew space race\u201d between the United States and China. \u201cBoth countries are competing to establish a base on the moon that will serve as a hub for future deep space missions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To him, the fact that the government announced the mission while deepening cuts in science goes to show that \u201cwhat matters to the government is the photo with the US flag, because of the geopolitical alignment that the Milei administration wants to exhibit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cover image: Artemis II at Kennedy Space Center January 2026. Photo: NASA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Argentine government recently announced that the country will participate in NASA\u2019s Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.\u00a0 The mission will launch five small satellites from NASA\u2019s international partners, including Atenea, which was developed in Argentina. President Javier Milei held up Argentina\u2019s spot in the moon mission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8524,8525,1068,59,4491,8523],"tags":[8520,8521,8522,86,4489,8519],"class_list":["post-29310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artemis-ii-moon-mission","category-atenea-satellite","category-nasa","category-politics","category-science-innovation","category-tech","tag-artemis-ii-moon-mission","tag-atenea-satellite","tag-nasa","tag-politics","tag-science-innovation","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}