13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 43destination, they might live in inflatable
shelters, single-occupancy domes connected
like Lego bricks and larger 3D-printed habitats.
And once they arrive, they will change the
moon and our relationship with it for good.
Most of the countries and companies vying
to go back to the moon will want to claw back
some of their huge investments, so mining
is likely to be one of the first activities on
the agenda. Water will probably be the most
valuable resource on Earth’s satellite, at least to
begin with. It could be split into hydrogen and
oxygen to make rocket fuel for return trips tohome, they jettisoned as much weight
from the spacecraft as they could to
make room for the cargo of heavy
moon rocks they were bringing back
to Earth. The materials they ejected
included 96 bags of faeces and urine
(pictured left).
FALLEN ASTRONAUT
MEMORIAL
In a long, narrow depression to the
west of the Montes Apenninus, a
mountain range in the moon’s
northern hemisphere, is a memorial
to eight American astronauts and
six Soviets who died in the pursuit
of space travel. The 8.5-centimetre
metal sculpture is in the crude shape
of an astronaut. It was commissioned
and placed on the moon by the crew
of Apollo 15, alongside a plaque
commemorating their lost comrades.MORTAR LAUNCHERS
To learn about the interior of the
moon, Apollo astronauts used
explosives to give it a good thump
and then measured the ensuing
sound waves wobbling through its
rocky subsurface. The explosives were
either remotely launched after they
left the moon, or were set to go off
days after a grenade-like pin was
pulled by astronauts, who then madetheir escape using lunar buggies. The
mortar launchers remain on the moon
(pictured above), but who knows if
they would still work after decades
of exposure to the harsh conditions.THE SECRETS TO DAVID
COPPERFIELD’S MAGIC TRICKS
The most recent attempt to land on
the moon took place in April 2019
and ended with the crash of the
privately funded Beresheet spacecraft.
However, its payload was well
protected and might just have survived
the impact. The lander was carrying a
disc with a 30-million page data library
that includes the English version of
Wikipedia, tens of thousands of books
and the technical instructions for David
Copperfield’s illusions. An orbiting
NASA craft has spotted the crash site,
so future explorers would know where
to look for the answers.5.5 km
Base to peak height of the
moon’s tallest mountain,
Mons Huygens
6
The number of rovers that
have trundled across the
lunar surfaceEarth and other planets or to be burned to
generate power. Water prospecting is likely to
draw people to the moon’s shadowed craters,
especially at the south pole, where spacecraft
have sniffed its presence for the past decade.
Under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload
Services programme, private firms are
competing for grants to design spacecraft that
can deliver various landers and instruments,
including some that can search for resources
like water. In March, when US vice-president
Mike Pence directed NASA to return humans
to the moon by 2024 for a landing at the south
pole, he highlighted its abundant water.
But water harvesting is only one element of
the moon’s possible future. It can be more than
a place where people are allowed to extract
resources for profit. Perhaps it will end up as
an environmental reserve, where mining is
banned but tourists can enjoy hiking trips,
albeit pretty extreme trips. Or it could be a
bastion of research for its own sake, much
like Antarctica’s various scientific outposts.
Now is the time to decide, according to
anthropologists who study space exploration.
To figure out what the next crop of
moonwalkers will look like, we must first decide
why we want to send them, says Lisa Messeri, an
anthropologist at Yale University. “What I want
for our spacefaring future is honesty about our
reasons for going,” she says. “Apollo was as much
political as it was anything else, but it was always
couched in the language of science and human
ingenuity, and I think that led to the kinds of
people who were selected and who went.”
The Apollo astronauts were mostly pilots
with a penchant for danger, hastily trained inBillionaire Yusaku Maezawa
(above) has bought all the seats
on a trip around the moon planned
for 2023. There are many visions
for moon bases (left)382 kg
The mass of moon rocks
returned to EarthShackleton Base is imaginary, for now. What
is real is this: a generation after the Apollo
missions, the people preparing to visit the
moon look different to their forebears.
They aren’t all white American men, for a
start (for all that the Soviet Union made the
running early on in the space race, when it
came to putting someone on the moon, it
never really got close). Neither are they all
specially trained astronauts; they include
artists and billionaires. There are people from
China, Japan and Europe, and many will launch
far from Cape Canaveral. Once they reach their
PATRICK^ T.^ FA
LLON/BLOOMBE
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