We Choose to Go to the Moon For All Humanity: Apollo vs. Artemis and the Evolution of Space Marketing

April 9, 2026

By: Fay Hong

Courtesy of NASA

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.

–President Kennedy, “We choose to go to the Moon” speech at Rice University, 1962

For All Humanity.

–Artemis II Mission Motto, 2026

The Return to the Moon

We first set out to send humans to the Moon in the ’60s, at the height of the Cold War Space Race–a race the United States was losing.

When President John F. Kennedy stepped up to the podium at Rice University on September 12, 1962, the United States was falling behind. Unless something changed, the Moon would bear the Soviet flag first.

That moment set off one of the most defining missions in modern history.

Now, over half a century later, we’re going back.

Welcome to Artemis—Apollo’s twin sister, NASA’s newest program to return humans to the Moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars. You may have heard about Artemis II sending astronauts back toward lunar orbit, but not in the same way the world heard about Apollo in the 1960s.

Why?

Because this time, everything is different.

Fifty years have elapsed. The technology has changed. The political landscape has changed. And most importantly, the way these missions are presented to the public–aka, the way they are marketed–has changed with them.

Courtesy of NASA

Apollo: Where Failure was not an Option

For many reasons, both externally and internally, Apollo had a much easier time being marketed than its 21st-century sister counterpart. The geopolitical and socioeconomic state of the world in the 60s’ and 70s’ was a perfect backdrop for a campaign that would reach the moon and back (haha, get it?), so in hindsight, the scale of Apollo’s reach isn’t surprising.

Apollo. The mission was simple and direct: put a man on the moon, and do it before the Soviets. The messaging was brutally simple and unapologetically patriotic, and so were the stakes.

People unite when there’s a common enemy. And Apollo had one. It was the stars and stripes vs. the hammer and sickle. 

So, really, the Cold War, in many ways, did half of the marketing for the government.

The Power of Simplicity

Now onto the actual marketing strategies behind Apollo:

The first—and most prominent—strategy was strict message discipline. Unlike most modern campaigns, NASA didn’t lean on clever messaging or tailor its approach for different audiences; rather, it locked onto one idea and ran with it to hell and back.

Every broadcast, press release, and newspaper article reinforced the same message: we’re going to the Moon.

No pivots, no rebrands, no competing narratives. Just repetition on a mass scale.

This is a kind of brutal consistency rarely seen in marketing campaigns today, not because modern marketers can’t, but because they shouldn’t. Not in the highly fragmented current media environment. 

Courtesy of NASA

Broadcast to a Nation

If the Cold War gave Apollo its urgency, the media gave it its reach. Another interesting aspect of this campaign was that Apollo wasn’t driven by advertising but by PR.

The government pushed information into every available channel: television, newspapers, and radio. Because the media environment of the 1960s had no social media, no digital decentralization, and few widespread competing narratives in the United States regarding the Cold War, that message spread cleanly and widely, with little resistance. 

When NASA would broadcast a launch, the country watched. Not segments of the country–the entire country. And arguably, much of the world as well. It was a media environment any modern marketing agency would kill for, and, combined with the federal government's distributional power, made for a campaign that was practically impossible to ignore. 

Stars, Stripes, and the Moon

And it wouldn’t be the American government if it didn’t throw its entire weight into patriotism marketing. Of course not, have you not seen Uncle Sam or Rosie the Riveter?

The flow of attention stemming from the patriotism Americans rallied behind in this era was straightforward, strategic, and overwhelmingly efficient. Rocket launches and splashdowns–which, arguably, could be considered an early form of “live event marketing”–were treated as national spectacles, events that changed the entire trajectory of aerospace and astronautics (and they might as well have).

A culture grew out of these broadcasts, turning technical milestones into shared cultural experiences that all Americans could connect with (“I saw that live!”). Then, through hero manufacturing, this new cultural staple was given figureheads. Figures like Alan Shepard, the Apollo astronauts, and top government officials of the Kennedy administration became symbols of American patriotism, bravery, and courage–quite literally, “star sailors,” sailing the seven seas of the stars. They became the Uncle Sams and Rosie the Riveters of the universe beyond, American symbols of just how far we could go. 

Apollo didn’t just sell a mission; it sold people, people like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who would go down in history as the pioneers who opened an entirely new frontier for humanity to explore.

Courtesy of NASA

Artemis: For All Humanity

The difference between the “program mottos” of Apollo and Artemis couldn’t be more stark. Apollo was driven by a singular objective—beat the Soviets. Artemis, by contrast, positions itself “for all humanity.”

That shift—from nationalism to a broader, more collective purpose—completely reshapes the marketing challenge. Apollo didn’t have to explain itself. Artemis doesn’t have that luxury. Without a clear adversary or geopolitical backdrop, NASA now has to actively define and sell the mission’s value.

Apollo also benefited from clarity in both timeline and objective: get to the Moon, as fast as possible. That simplicity made the mission immediately understandable. Artemis, on the other hand, operates with a more expansive—and less concrete—mandate. According to NASA, its goal is to “explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.”

Instead of one clear objective, Artemis carries multiple: science, commercialization, long-term habitation, and future exploration. It’s not a worse mission—if anything, it’s more ambitious—but it’s inherently harder to communicate. And that’s a challenge NASA simply didn’t have to face for Apollo.

Courtesy of NASA

From Broadcast to Algorithm

Perhaps the greatest shift over the last fifty years, aside from geopolitics, is the transformation of the media landscape. In 1969, media were centralized, limited, and largely uniform, dominated by a handful of television networks, newspapers, and radio stations that controlled both the flow and framing of information. Audiences weren’t split; they were collective, often experiencing major events together in real time.

Over time, that structure broke apart. Cable television expanded both content and audiences, and the internet fundamentally decentralized information. By the early 2000s, media had shifted from a one-to-many broadcast model to a many-to-many network, where anyone could create and distribute content.

Today, media is defined by scale, speed, and fragmentation. Social platforms, streaming services, and algorithm-driven feeds have created an environment where attention is divided and constantly contested. No single narrative dominates for long, and visibility is no longer guaranteed—it has to be earned.

This is the landscape Artemis operates in. Unlike Apollo, it doesn’t have access to a unified audience or a centralized communication channel. It has to compete for attention across a splintered, algorithm-driven ecosystem where different audiences consume entirely different streams of information.

There is no single message that reaches everyone. Even major events are filtered through personalized feeds, shaped more by algorithms than by institutions. Combined with the absence of a unifying geopolitical driver like the Cold War, this makes Artemis significantly harder to market.

NASA can no longer just announce a mission, but rather also has to compete with everything else in the media environment. And in that kind of landscape, capturing attention requires far more than simply having a historic goal.

Courtesy of NASA

New Tools, New Playbook

However, this isn’t to say that Artemis can’t achieve the same level of cultural impact as Apollo. While changes in geopolitics and media have made NASA’s marketing job more difficult, they’ve also opened up an entirely new set of opportunities.

The same technological and media developments that decentralized audiences have also created a wide range of new formats and channels to reach them. NASA has leaned into this, marketing Artemis II across virtually every major platform. Through Instagram, Facebook, and X under the @NASAArtemis brand, they push out launch updates, astronaut introductions, mission visuals, and countdowns, each tailored to different audiences and formats.

Beyond that, NASA has adopted more modern strategies: branded hashtags like #Artemis and #NASAMoonCrew, user-generated campaigns inviting the public to share their own “moon crews,” and a growing ecosystem of space enthusiasts and influencers amplifying the mission across platforms (myself included, apologies to anyone who’s had to sit through my endless Artemis stories).

So while today’s media landscape makes it harder to create a single, unified narrative, it also allows NASA to engage audiences in ways that simply weren’t possible during Apollo. Instead of broadcasting to everyone at once, Artemis is able to reach people where they already are, just more targeted, more interactive, and, in the end, more participatory.

A Mission in Real Time

Now, for those of us who weren’t in Cape Canaveral on April 1st, 2026, we had to watch the Artemis II liftoff through a livestream (I’m still jealous of everyone back in my hometown of Orlando who got to see it in person). There’s something surreal about watching a rocket launch from your bed (something that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago), but it’s also easy to take for granted just how much access modern technology has given us.

The Moon landing, by contrast, was broadcast live on television via satellite, with an estimated 600 million people worldwide watching the same feed at the same time. There was no choice of platform, no alternative stream, just one signal, one narrative, one collective experience.

Artemis II lives in a completely different environment. The launch wasn’t confined to a single channel, as it was readily available everywhere. You could watch it on NASA+, on YouTube Live, on X, or even through someone’s TikTok livestream. Access is no longer the barrier; in fact, access is unlimited.

In fact, access is so unlimited—and the technology so advanced—that we can now watch astronauts move around the Orion capsule and participate in live interviews with reporters back on Earth in real time. NASA even maintains a 24/7 livestream that shows both views from the spacecraft and the official communication between mission control in Houston and the crew.

This creates a level of immersion that Apollo simply couldn’t offer. Viewers can now follow the mission as it unfolds, moment by moment, increasing the feeling that they’re actually living through history being made (because we are!). And when you pair that with the constant stream of clipped interviews, highlights, and commentary circulating online, Artemis becomes not just a single event, but an ongoing media presence.

From a marketing perspective, that’s a major advantage. Instead of relying on one defining moment–the Eagle has landed–, NASA can sustain attention over time, keeping audiences engaged through continuous content, real-time interaction, and repeated exposure across platforms.

(And yes, this is most definitely responsible for my insane YouTube screen time over the past few days.)

Courtesy of NASA

To Infinity and Beyond

As I write this, the Artemis II crew is closer to the Moon than they are to Earth–a concept I still can’t quite wrap my head around. Flight and space travel have come so far since the Wright brothers, and yet it still feels like we’re only at the beginning.

Not just technologically, but in how we share and understand these moments.

NASA’s Apollo and Artemis programs were born in two very different worlds, existed for two very different reasons, and were shaped by entirely different ways of reaching the public. 

But in looking at them side by side, we’re not just comparing two missions: we’re tracing the evolution of how humanity tells its own story.

From a world where one message could reach everyone, to one where every message must fight to be seen, Apollo and Artemis reveal not just how far we’ve traveled through space, but how far we’ve come in the way we connect, communicate, and imagine what comes next.

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Editor’s Note:

For readers interested in a deeper dive into the Apollo and Artemis, the full-length version of this article is available here.