21 When Will We Go Back to the Moon?

It has been more than fifty years since the first human beings landed on the moon. On July 16, 1969, the mighty Saturn V five-moon rocket—the largest machine to ever fly—slowly lifted off the launchpad, riding atop a pillar of fire. In a small capsule on the tip of the rocket were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

Four days later, on July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin guided their lander, Eagle, onto the surface of the moon, and the famous “one small step” was taken by Armstrong. He and Aldrin became the first humans to walk on another world. For a moment, the world was united as people everywhere shared in humanity’s greatest adventure.

There were five more lunar landings after Armstrong and Aldrin made the first boot prints in alien soil. In total, twelve men have actually walked on the surface of the moon. Some of them have even driven an electric car among the craters. The last footsteps were from Gene Cernan in 1972. No one has been back to the moon since.

American astronauts are slated to return to the moon sometime in the 2020s, first in a new moon space station, then down to the surface.

The type of rocket that went to the moon—the mighty Saturn V—was twice as high as Niagara Falls. A new rocket called the SLS, or Space Launch System, is planned to be even taller. And other rockets such as the Falcon Heavy and Starship, both from SpaceX, are almost as big.

The small capsules that carried astronauts to the moon were called the Command Modules. They held three people. A new Starliner capsule has the same shape but is much larger and carries a crew of four to six. And another, called Dragon 2, holds seven.

You might be wondering why a new spacecraft looks the same as one that was used half a century ago. Why not something with wings?

The short answer is that it worked before, so it should work again. Since it takes a lot of energy to get to the moon, something small without wings is easier to fly. Besides, you’ll recall that wings are only used to land back on Earth. There’s no air on the moon, so why bring wings?

Here’s how it will work. The first trip back to the moon will not actually be to land on it but to build a space station, Deep Space Gateway, that will orbit around it.

Like the International Space Station but smaller, Deep Space Gateway will be built out of linked modules made by many countries. It will be a home for astronauts to study the moon from above before anyone goes to live there.

Once Deep Space Gateway is finished, the next missions will be able to focus on returning to the surface of the moon. The world’s largest rockets—the SLS, the Falcon Heavy, or the Starship—will carry a crew and capsule into orbit around the Earth. Once in space, the astronauts will take off on a three-day journey to the Deep Space Gateway. When they arrive, the crew will rendezvous with the other astronauts who work at the lunar-orbiting station and pick up their lunar lander. Some of the crew will enter the lander while the rest remain in the station.

Landing on the moon will be its own exciting challenge. Since there will be no air, wings or parachutes won’t be any use. Instead, as the lunar lander descends, it will use its rocket engine to slow itself and drift down slowly, like a helicopter. Landers have unusual shapes because they don’t have to be aerodynamic. They don’t need nice, smooth bodies like airplanes. The lander will kick up lots of dust, but hopefully it will manage a clean landing. Once it does, astronauts will finally step out and onto the surface of the moon once again.

Back on planet Earth, we will rejoice. We’ll look up into the sky in wonder. We’ll celebrate. But there will be one big difference between this lunar mission and the ones in the old days: this crew will be on the moon to stay. They will be there with a habitat, living quarters, and laboratories to live for months at a time so that they can conduct scientific experiments, collect samples, and test equipment that will eventually be used to explore Mars.

The lunar habitat will be made of similar modules to the Deep Space Gateway. They’ll be hooked together but will lie on the ground rather than float in space. The habitat might even be inflatable, ready to be blown up once the astronauts get there.

One thing that’s nice about living on the moon as opposed to Mars is that astronauts will see the Earth out of their habitat window. The moon also offers a wonderful viewing platform for the stars because there is no atmosphere or clouds, so the view of the universe is incredibly clear.

It’s also a chance to explore more of the moon itself. There’s one area of the moon that may be the most unusual and interesting of all: the South Pole. There’s a crater at the bottom of the moon where the sun never rises above the rim. Remember, the sun shines mostly around the equator of the moon, just like it does on Earth, so at the South Pole, the sun is very low in the sky. That means the floor of this crater is always in shadow. Shadows on the moon are extremely cold—cold enough for ice to exist. On the moon, ice would be as valuable as gold because it would provide drinking water and could be used to make rocket fuel for an eventual voyage home.

But ice on the moon, again like gold on Earth, is not easy to get to. The ice exists at the cold and dark bottom of the deep moon crater, which is hard for machinery and astronauts to reach. On the other hand, the edge of the crater—the top of the rim—is in sunlight all the time. We see the same effect on Earth during the summer in the high Arctic, where the midnight sun stays up for months at a time.

One idea is to place solar panels at the top of the crater rim to produce electricity from the sun, build a colony there, and send robots to mine the ice down in the crater floor of the moon. You might have heard of water as H₂O. That means it is made of hydrogen and oxygen. If water is taken apart, using electricity drawn from those solar panels, then the oxygen can be used for breathing and the hydrogen can be burned as rocket fuel.

Living on the moon means more than just work all the time. There has to be some playtime as well. So far, only one person has played a sport on another world. In 1971, Alan Shepard, commander of Apollo 14, took two golf balls to the moon. Using a makeshift club, he fired off two shots. The first he flubbed, but the second supposedly went out of sight, thanks to the low lunar gravity. The problem with lunar golf is there’s no turf. The moon is one giant sand trap. And with so many craters, how do you know which one is the hole?

Other sports could be just as fun. The moon is smaller than the Earth, so gravity is not as strong there. If you lived on the moon, you’d weigh one-sixth your weight on Earth. Imagine the trick shots you could make in basketball, or how high you could leap in the high jump. What if we melted some of that moon ice and made it into a skating rink for figure skating? Quad jumps? Heck, you could probably spin ten times before coming back down. In fact, you’d be jumping so far, they’d have to make the ice surface a lot bigger. The first Olympics on the moon would break all records!

On the other hand, another group of space scientists thinks it would be a waste of time going back to the moon because we have already been there. They think we should skip the moon and go straight to Mars.

What do you think?