‘I take Man’s last steps from the surface for some time to come, but we believe not too long into the future.’ (Astronaut Eugene Cernan, December 1972 — the ‘last’ man on the Moon.)
No human being has stepped on the Moon since then. Even if we don’t go back tomorrow — or even next year — there are still plans and hopes for the next few decades.
To scientists the Moon is a book waiting to be read. Its rocks can tell us the earliest history of our solar system — a story that Earth can no longer tell us, as its surface has been changed significantly by the effects of volcanoes, water, wind and ice.
However to test the theory of how the Moon was created (see pages 6–8) and answer other questions about the Moon’s history and structure, we need new rock samples from a wide range of lunar terrains.
All the rock samples taken by the Apollo astronauts came from the safe landing zones on the plains of the Moon’s near side — a bit like taking a few rocks from Tasmania and trying to work out the history of Earth from them!
Worse: the rock samples were all taken from the top few centimetres of the Moon’s surface. The astronauts didn’t have the equipment to dig metres, let alone hundreds of metres, down into the Moon’s surface.
Earth is a ‘live’ planet — the ‘plates’ that our land masses move on both rise and sink. But the Moon stays just as it is, except for being bombarded by meteorites. On Earth, those can be lost among vegetation, or soil covers them or, eventually, they sink and they too become ‘the ring of fire’. The Moon keeps it meteorites, sometimes large, often tiny. The material the astronauts brought back shows us what is on the surface, but not below.
What are the strange lights that many astronomers claim to have seen flickering up on the Moon? (See pages 143–144.) Could there still be volcanoes on the Moon? What caused the great bombardment that created the lunar plains? Are there minerals on the Moon that could be mined?
Studying the Moon from Earth
The Moon is still being studied, even if no more footprints have been added to the ones in the dust. (With no wind on the Moon the decades-old footprints will still be there.)
Ever since Galileo made his own telescope in 1609 and saw the mountains and craters of the Moon, we have been learning about our nearest neighbour. In 1959, the Soviet Union landed Luna 2, a space probe, on the Moon’s surface. The far side of the Moon was first photographed on 7 October 1959, by the Soviet probe Luna 3. The landing of Luna 9, in 1966, proved that something standing on the Moon would (probably) not sink so deep into the soft dust that it could never take off again. Without Luna 9, the Apollo missions may never have taken place.
Before the United States landed on the Moon, thus ‘winning’ the race to get there, the Soviet Union not only had a vast program of studying the Moon, ending with Luna 24 in 1976, but they also had plans to build a moon base there, called ‘Zvezda’.
In 1990, Japan’s Hiten spacecraft orbited the Moon, but the transmitter on its probe failed and so it was unable to transmit information back to Earth. (Their SELENE spacecraft in 2007 was successful, however, and Japan’s Lunar-A has measured moonquakes and heat flows deep inside the Moon.)
In 1994, the Clementine orbiter, an unmanned spacecraft circling the Moon, found signs of hydrogen, which may mean there is frozen water from old comet impacts in the shadowy craters of its ‘south pole’. This expedition cost a mere US$80 million — far cheaper than protecting human beings in space. In October 2003, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched SMART-1 to make the first map of the entire surface of the Moon. ESA’s LunarSat is continuing the search for buried water.
The China National Space Administration declared exploring the Moon to be a priority and planned to launch a lunar craft aboard a Long March rocket. In October 2003, the Chinese launched a manned spacecraft (the wonderfully named Shenzhou or ‘Divine Vessel’), which orbited Earth 14 times. China landed the rover Chang’e 3 on the Moon on 14 December 2013, and thus became the third country to have done so.
India’s national space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), launched Chandrayaan-1, an unmanned lunar orbiter, on 22 October 2008. It too found water, as did NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This was launched in 2009, together with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), and both have collected images of the Moon’s surface. LCROSS and GRAIL, which launched in 2011, investigated the possible existence of water in Cabeus crater and elsewhere.
These are only a few of the many probes sent by nations worldwide, primarily by the United States, Russia, Europe, China, Japan and India. Private companies are also investigating the Moon for potential resources. The first commercial mission to the Moon was the Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M) by LuxSpace, an affiliate of German OHB AG, launched on 23 October 2014 using the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 test spacecraft. On 13 September 2007, the XPRIZE Foundation, initially in concert with Google, Inc., announced the Lunar XPRIZE. The winner must ‘land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth’.
When Will We Return?
In 2004, in the lead-up to the United States presidential election, President George W. Bush promised a return to the Moon by 2015, with a permanent moon base and, eventually, a manned mission to Mars and beyond. NASA has already set up the Office of Human Exploration and Operations to develop the technologies to live on the Moon.
It didn’t happen.
In 2010, the European Space Agency announced its intention to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2018, as part of the Aurora Programme.
It didn’t happen either.
In 2015, Roscosmos, the Russian space corporation, stated that Russia plans to place an astronaut on the Moon by 2030. And in 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would create a base on the Moon as well as send astronauts to Mars. But so far, this has just been words.
Perhaps we may even step on the Moon again soon — for astronomers the Moon would be the best possible place to look at the sky, deep in a permanently shadowed crater free from the light pollution and radio interference on Earth.
Industry might also make use of the low gravity on the Moon. The Moon’s soil is also relatively rich in helium–3, an isotope that is all but non-existent on Earth. Helium–3 is valuable in medical diagnostics, and can produce proton beams that may be able to destroy cancers. But all the Apollo missions took samples from the equatorial region on the near side of the Moon, and these may not be typical of other areas.
A nuclear fusion reactor using helium–3 as fuel might be cheaper, safer and more efficient than the more conventional deuterium-based fusion process and provide power for a moon colony — especially if water and areas rich in useful minerals are found on the Moon.
The Moon’s surface, or ‘regolith’ may hold vast quantities of hydrogen and helium deposited by the solar wind.
Perhaps when you are my age you’ll holiday on the Moon, or go there to study, or even live. Or perhaps the Moon will be used as the launching ground for spacecraft that will take us to Mars or distant solar systems.
Once the Moon was remote, unknown, mysterious, a place to fantasise about. Now it is our backyard.
Imagine a holiday totally out of this world — on the Moon.
First you’ll travel to the Moon in the small ‘space bus’ that doesn’t require massive power to break free of Earth’s gravity.
You will arrive at the Moon space-port with a bit of a thud, but no worse than landing in a large plane on Earth. You’ll see Earth up above you, floating large and blue and white.
There is no need for a spacesuit to protect you from the cold and airlessness. Step through the airlock from the space bus into a moon buggy. The insulated moon buggy shuttle will whisk you over the hard-packed dust to the nearby deep canyon, with its hotel towers glinting in the late moon-day Sun. The buggy is hydrogen powered, from lunar ice — the ice is also separated into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel which powers most of the giant spacecraft launched from here to Mars and the stars. Most of these begin their journeys from the Moon nowadays because it takes less power to escape the low gravitational field on the Moon, and of course the water also provides the oxygen for you to breathe.
No hotel on Earth could have towers quite as tall as the towers on the hotel in front of you. Each one has a cluster of turrets on top, to get the best view. There is no wind on the Moon to rock the towers and no high gravity either. The towers are coated with solar cells made from the Moon’s silicon and aluminium to generate electricity — there’s no shortage of power on the Moon, although solar batteries have to store it during the two-week ‘night’.
The moon buggy chugs down into the canyon and suddenly it’s dark. You can see the stars above you — and the welcoming lights of the hotel. (The hotel has been constructed from moon rocks and other materials found on the Moon fused into hardness by the heat focused by giant lenses.) Some of the water you’ll drink has been mined from the deep canyons — the rest has been recycled from the urine and faeces and sweat of thousands of tourists before you.
There’s a lift in the hotel, but most guests don’t want to use it — it’s much more fun bounding up the wide, shallow steps in one-sixth gravity. Even your suitcases weigh hardly anything on the Moon. In fact the hotel management want people to use the steps — muscles can rapidly get flabby on the Moon. The hotel staff exercise for two hours a day in the high gravity room with its giant centrifuge, or in the ‘vacuum chamber’ that sucks them to the floor to create artificial body weight so that their muscles don’t waste away.
You peer across the thick windowsill. Moon temperatures vary between 110˚C (hot enough to boil water) and –170˚C; lethal cosmic rays and solar particles bombard the lunar surface, as there is no atmosphere to stop them — so the hotel walls are made of thick moon rock to protect the guests.
The view from your room high in the towers is almost ghostly — silver sunlight on grey dust, and the deep shadows of hills and canyons. You try to make out Australia on Earth shining above you, but perhaps your home planet is facing the ‘wrong’ way — and it may be difficult to make out continents as Earth is so far away. You decide to use one of the telescopes in the turrets at the top of the towers before Earth ‘sets’ later ‘today’ — in four days’ time. (The hotel operates on Earth time — a two-week day of partying and a two-week night-time sleep is a bit much even for people on holiday.)
Now what? The holiday brochure offered you mountaineering in one-sixth gravity — climbing in a way that is impossible on Earth — or abseiling down crater walls or riding dust sleds over the Sea of Tranquility.
You have come for the flying, and not just low-G golf, moon tennis or being able to jump 20 metres on a trampoline! You bound down the steps from your tower — avoiding the canoodling couple who have decided that the best place for a ‘honeymoon’ is the Moon itself — then up the stairs of the ‘flyers’ castle’. Right at the top there’s a huge room, filled with big plastic wings and a flying harness. The flying instructor shows you how to fit your wings — they are carefully matched to your size, weight and experience — and then takes you to the beginners’ ledge.
You stare down — and keep staring. Below you dozens of flyers are sweeping and soaring in a long, gentle sweep down to the ground.
You jump . . . and fall . . . then remember to put your wings out . . . and in an instant you are flying! This is real flying, not just gliding, because when you flap your wings in this low gravity you really do fly upwards.
Your arm muscles are going to be sore tomorrow, but you don’t care! It was worth coming 380,000 kilometres just for this!
Dinner is good, although there isn’t any beef or lamb — even chickens don’t do well in the Moon’s low gravity. But there’s fish — and fruits and vegetables that are grown hydroponically on the Moon, and specially bred massive ‘moon mushrooms’ that grow in sun-dried faeces in the low-gravity caverns in the canyons. You finally decide on a ‘moon steak’ of baked blue-green algae, with algae and strawberry pancakes for dessert.
After dinner there’s a low-gravity dance at the nightclub — and those moon dances are wild!
Then tomorrow another day of flying.
The week rushes by! (And it’s only been half a ‘day’ moon time.) Tomorrow it’s back to Earth again. Your muscles will ache in Earth’s high gravity and your bank account will be empty — holidays on the Moon aren’t cheap. But you’re dreaming of the next one. Perhaps one day you can get a job on the Moon working at the telescope built deep in a shadowed crater, or mining precious helium–3 or at the new Martian colony. Or perhaps you will decide to leave Earth’s gravity behind you, and book a place for yourself — and your kids and grandchildren — on the ‘new generation’ spacecraft speeding out to search the galaxy for planets and moons for humans to colonise.
Science fiction? Maybe not. There are already plans for hotels on the Moon — and one day some of the other dreams will probably come true.
Nearly every night the Moon sails above us, reminding us of the world humanity visited, then left. As the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned moon landing approached in 2019, many nations, individuals and companies announced their future moon ambitions.
In 2013 China sent a lander onto the Moon, but it took until January 2019 for China to do what no other nation had ever attempted, landing a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon — the side that always remains invisible from Earth.
The Chang’e 4 lander touched down in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest, oldest, deepest crater on the Moon’s surface. It is measuring the terrain and mineral composition there, of special interest because the Aitken Basin was formed during a gigantic collision early in the Moon’s history, and the collision is likely to have thrown up material from the Moon’s interior. Chang’e 4 could provide new clues as to how the Moon was formed, and what minerals may be found deeper than the surface areas so far investigated.
Chang’e 4 also achieved yet another extraordinary ‘first’. They germinated a cotton seed — the first living plant on the Moon. It only survived 24 hours, killed by the intense cold in the Moon’s night, but growing food and other plants will be essential if humans are to spend more than a few days or weeks on the Moon. And it seems likely that we will.
The SpaceIL organisation was established in 2011 to try to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE of US$30 million, to be awarded to a privately funded team who land a craft on the Moon, move it at least 500 metres and transmit images back to Earth. This team of Israeli scientists has launched the first privately funded mission to land on the Moon, named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis. The robotic lander is propelled by one of US entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. It will measure the Moon’s magnetic field, further investigate how the Moon was formed, and also leave a digital ‘time capsule’ of more than 30 million pages of data, containing items like children’s drawings, the Bible and memoirs of a Holocaust survivor. No one has won the Google Lunar XPRIZE as I write this in March 2019, but it seems certain it will be claimed in the near future.
Two more moon missions were announced in early 2019, another by China and one by India. Even Australia has the newly formed Australian Space Agency, though it may focus more on satellite technology than Moon visits. (There are still few details about how the agency will work, where and what its funding will be.) Increased satellite use can help Australia with remote sensing imagery for farming, for our environmental problems like coral bleaching and for monitoring mining operations and pollution. Australia was once at the forefront of the space industry — we have long coastlines from where rockets can be launched and retrieved from the sea, areas that are near the equator where rocket launching is most efficient, and areas where rockets could be launched into polar orbits. Space technology is also becoming cheaper — a satellite can be launched now for as little as a million dollars — which means a nation like Australia — or Australian companies and individuals — may find it possible to join or even challenge the ambitions of far larger nations.
The USA is planning a small crewed space station that will orbit the Moon and NASA has called for private investors to join the project.
The Moon has minerals, rare on Earth, that are increasingly needed as technology changes and our own resources are used up. The Moon might also be a safe place for industries that might pollute Earth. Polluting yet another world after we have so damaged our own may seem wrong, but with no atmosphere, weather or rivers to spread pollution, the consequences may be far less severe than here.
The Moon, with its lighter gravity, may also serve as a station for ventures further into space. It is free of the growing light and radio wave pollution of Earth, and so it is a superb place to observe the universe beyond us. And if or when Earth is hit by another giant asteroid, or another cataclysm, a settlement on the Moon might be an archive of knowledge, seeds and other necessities to save civilisation or even humanity altogether.
But like so many young people across the planet, as children Jackie and I gazed up at the Moon and wondered. We simply long to know more about that glowing sphere in the darkness that we and all humanity have watched all our lives.