Returning to the Moon is not about the planet itself, at least not completely, but rather it is a gateway to larger space ambitions.
More than 60 years after the first Americans landed on the moon, a new space race towards this planet has begun. But with much higher stakes and new players, this race is no longer limited to simply placing a flag on its dusty surface, but investing its limited resources and controlling a permanent portal to transport humans to Mars and beyond.
According to a report published on the Daily Beast website, whether it is NASA, China, Russia, or a group of private companies that end up taking over the planet, it is not about the moon itself. Rather, it is for whom this control will enable him to easily reach the rest of the solar system.
Different race
James Rice, chief scientist at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, says the current space race has some differences from the 1960s, when "things have changed dramatically in terms of technology and players.
"This is not the moon we thought about during the days of the Apollo mission," he adds. "Scientists have learned a lot about the moon through more detailed analysis of the samples, as well as many missions that searched for exactly what might be on the planet's surface and still hidden deep in the earth."
Although we've known for more than a decade that the moon may be teeming with reserves of water ice, only last year NASA announced that it had found the best evidence yet that water trapped in icy pockets was circulating across the planet's surface much older than previously thought. A discovery that fueled the idea of building a permanent base on the Moon that astronauts could use to reach Mars and other celestial destinations.
This is very important; Water is a valuable resource for space travelers, not only for astronauts to drink, but also to convert into rocket fuel for use in the explosion.
As it is known scientifically, water consists of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, and the latter is known as the most efficient type of propellant, while oxygen can be combined with fuel to cause combustion, and the ability to break all that water ice on the moon means that you can access all its components; It is a massive source of rocket fuel, and - an added bonus - any excess oxygen can be used as breathable air by astronauts.
Midpoint
Finding these resources on the moon is much better than moving them from Earth, where mobilizing any resources of this kind into space costs a high price, for example, launching a payload weighing one pound into Earth's orbit costs 10,000 dollars, according to NASA. It would be far less costly to use the resources the Moon offers to build a planetary stopping point to other cosmic destinations.
"I think the moon is positioned as a mid-point or the first step toward Mars,it's not the final destination," says Casey Dreyer, senior space policy advisor at The Planetary Society, a non-profit organization that promotes space exploration.
In other words, returning to the moon is not about the planet itself, at least not completely, but rather it is a gateway to greater space ambitions, so "Artemis" - NASA's New Moon Exploration Program - is frequently described not as just a return to the footsteps of the program space apollo; But it is the primary basis for a permanent presence on the surface of the moon.
Tags:
SCIENCE UPDATE