Former shuttle astronaut and teacher Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger joins 'Fox & Friends' on the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

Just before my final, 2001 shuttle mission to help build the International Space Station, I asked the NASA chief of human spaceflight when he thought we’d return to the moon. "Oh, probably not until 2010," he answered. I was floored — how could it possibly take that long to jump from the shuttle and ISS to the moon? After all, we’d landed there six times between 1969 and 1972.

NASA’s efforts to return to the moon, home to valuable space resources, have been repeatedly stalled by shifting space policies and failures in leadership. Finally, 25 years after my question, NASA is ready to make that giant leap. It rolled its giant Space Launch System booster to the launch pad and is poised to send the Artemis II crew of four astronauts on a looping path nearly 5,000 miles beyond our celestial neighbor.

President Donald Trump’s first administration directed NASA to lead an international return to the moon with the Artemis program, but progress has been delayed by halting technical progress and anemic funding. Artemis II will launch the first Orion spacecraft crew on a key, 10-day test flight to wring out their ship’s systems, and test astronauts and mission controllers in the harsh environment 240,000 miles from Earth. A successful flight — the first piloted moon journey since 1972’s Apollo 17, will pave the way for the next Artemis crew to try a harrowing touchdown on the lunar surface.

NASA SAYS AMERICA WILL WIN ‘THE SECOND SPACE RACE’ AGAINST........

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