3 ideas
A mission can be named for where it goes while its real stakes lie somewhere else entirely. Visiting the past matters mainly because of what that visit could do to what comes after. Asking what an undertaking actually protects, rather than where it is headed, can reverse your reading of its purpose.
The future is not a destination that arrives on its own. It is a fragile outcome that people positioned earlier in time can damage or preserve. Seeing it this way turns the future from an object of prediction into an object of custody, with duties assigned to whoever can affect it.
Gaining the power to act on earlier moments means taking on responsibility for every later moment that depends on them. The more reach an actor has into causes, the more its real job becomes preventing harm to effects rather than satisfying curiosity about origins.