It only took Johann-Dietrich Woerner a week to make some pretty big waves. After taking the helm of the European Space Agency last year, his first act was to call for a village to be built on the far side of the moon.
He wasn鈥檛 talking about houses, shops and a town hall 鈥� Woerner was calling for a permanent moon mission, complete with communication satellites, robots and astronauts. He鈥檚 not alone. Russia recently resumed a lunar exploration programme on hold since the late 1990s. NASA and China are also eyeing moon bases.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit like the 60s and 70s again,鈥� says David Iron of the , a not-for-profit organisation that is crowdfunding a private moon lander.
The hot new real estate is the lunar south pole. Over the past few years, it has become an attractive candidate for a crewed base. Its mountain peaks are sunlit 75 to 80 per cent of the time, perfect for generating solar power. They sit next to craters and other depressions in permanent shade, where water and other volatile elements may be stashed away as ice; in 2009, NASA鈥檚 LCROSS orbiter detected water in the impact vapour of a rocket motor crashing into the Cabeus crater. There may even be helium to fuel nuclear power plants. 鈥淭his might make for an ideal location for a lunar village,鈥� says Simeon Barber at the Open University, UK.
Now projects are thick on the ground. When Russia鈥檚 Luna-27 lands at the lunar south pole in 2020, it will begin prospecting for resources that could be used in a future crewed base. Four years later, the Lunar Mission One lander will drill for resources.
Prospecting is one thing 鈥� but who has the money to build a moon base? The only candidate, Barber thinks, is a large international collaboration, for example a major radio observatory. On the far side of the moon, interference from Earth would be minimal. An array of radio telescopes there would provide unprecedented views of the wider universe.
This will require leaps in construction: both ESA and NASA are eyeing lunar surface material to feed a 3D printer, allowing . Then there are legal hurdles 鈥� the United Nations has decreed the moon and its natural resources to be 鈥渁 common heritage of mankind鈥�. Solve these problems, however, and a moon village might take on new importance. Lessons learned there could help catapult us further out 鈥� to Mars, Europa and beyond.
Read more: The 6 greatest mysteries of the solar system
(Image: Alan Friedman)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥渃an we live elsewhere?鈥�
