YOU don鈥檛 land aircraft without knowing the lay of the land below. Yet that is exactly what space-faring nations seem to be planning when it comes to the moon.
Future landings based on existing knowledge 鈥渨ould not meet expectations with respect to safety鈥�, say planetary scientists Maria Zuber and Ian Garrick-Bethell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At the time of the Apollo landings, the pressures of cold war rivalry meant that few realised the real risks, Zuber says. But for future missions, choosing a safe landing site will mean scanning the moon鈥檚 surface to a resolution of a few metres or better, she says.
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This sort of information was available to NASA scientists when the twin rovers landed on Mars in 2004. Features on the moon, though, are still only known to an accuracy of 100 metres vertically and a few kilometres horizontally.
A slew of new moon orbiters from the US, Europe, Japan, China and India should change all that. If all goes well, the face of the moon should be sufficiently familiar for a safe landing 鈥� but not until 2018.
