On a September day in Texas, a President’s words ignited the spirit, endeavour, and determination of a nation and set in motion arguably the most significant event in human exploration. “We choose to go to the Moon, we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” At the time – 1962 – many didn’t believe President Kennedy’s vision was possible. Only four Americans had flown into space, of those only two had orbited the Earth. The Soviets were ahead in the Space Race. Yet in just over a decade, twelve American men had walked on the surface of the Moon. The impossible become possible. And America had won the race.
Today, there are still only twelve men who have walked on the surface of the Moon. Of those, seven are still alive. The youngest is now 80. According to Apollo 11 Moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin, we could have gone beyond the Moon to Mars ‘as early as the 1980s or at the very latest the 1990s’. Yet somewhere along the line we got side tracked. We haven’t returned to the Moon, or beyond Low Earth Orbit, in over 43 years and attempts to recapture the spirit of Apollo by subsequent Presidents, have fallen short.
But our interest and need to explore the Moon has not waned, with private companies now competing in a new Moon Race. “It is the next natural destination for people. A stepping stone towards Mars and deeper into our solar system. Like learning to camp in our backyard, before we head out to the Antarctic”, says John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, a space robotics company, with the goal of making the Moon accessible to the world, by providing a delivery service for payloads to the surface. The Space Angels Network portfolio company was founded in 2007 by William Whittaker in response to the Google Lunar XPRIZE. “This was developed to inspire people from all over the world to explore options for going to the Moon in a resourceful and cost-effective way” says Chanda Gonzales, Prize Lead for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. The challenge being to send a rover to the lunar surface and travel 500m, beaming back videos and images.
“Now is the right time” explains Thornton. “The cost to access space has reached a point where it is viable to build an affordable lunar delivery service that can address the market demand.” For Astrobotic, this means not only providing services for companies that wish to send payloads to the Moon, but also using its Peregrine lander to deliver two of the other competing XPRIZE rovers (Chile and Japan) to the lunar surface. “We have a world class team, coming together to make this a reality.” That team includes recent partnerships with Aerojet Rocketdyne, Airbus, and perhaps most significantly of all DHL. “Our long term goal is to make regular deliveries to the surface of the Moon. We want lunar deliveries to become boring, normal, and routine.”
Whereas in 1962 the Moon was America’s dream, today there is international interest. Our scientific knowledge and understanding has increased to the level where we now know there is significant amounts of water on the Moon. As well as other resources such as minerals and elements, with potential economic benefits back on Earth as well enabling us to explore deeper in the solar system. Something which was once seen as Science Fiction, in movies such as Moon, is becoming reality. “All great ideas start as Science Fiction” adds Thornton. Although Moon mining today certainly faces challenges, agencies and private companies are determined to overcome them.
For Bernard Foing, Executive Director of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) International Lunar Exploration Working Group the goal is to make the Moon the eighth continent. In Europe the plan is for a Moon Village, a permanent lunar outpost for both robots and humans, the natural next project after the International Space Station. Access would be open to to ESA states and other nations around the world. “The ISS is ending, we have to think of the next big project. It really is like a continent with resources very close to the Earth. It is a great platform, where we can really settle in and solve a lot of challenges; using resources, generating economic benefit to fund exploration and benefit from the data we find there.”
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http://www.interstellar-news.net/2016/06/the-new-moon-shot.html
