NASA could give the Moon the business. That is, a program might be dedicated to not only support NASA interests, but also the lunar science community and commercial groups too.

One outcome from the Return to the Moon III meeting last month was a call for NASA to establish a data purchase plan.

Data can be had at the Moon beneficial to both scientific and economic interests. That information can aid in putting up commercial lunar hotels, establishing mining facilities, as well as establish planetary training grounds for future Mars explorers.

"The consensus is that NASA can open the door to commercial lunar development if they'll implement this data purchase program to encourage the gathering of much-needed data from the Moon," said Rick Tumlinson, Space Frontier Foundation president.

What needs to happen now is multi-pronged, Tumlinson said.

• First, a special research and peer review committee should be set up to define the subjects and set priorities for future "ground truth" research done right at the Moon's surface, as well as from lunar orbit;
• Secondly, a pricing structure for each of the different subject categories of data to be purchased is needed;
• Thirdly, a criterion for payment, calibration of data, and verification that data acquired meets stipulated specifications has to be established; and
• Lastly, the U.S. Congress would be presented this step-by-step plan. The goal for funding the new approach is fiscal year 2003.

Thanks to an onslaught of robotic probes and a dozen moonwalkers, one could easily think of the Moon as a been there, done that world.

That might be the view here in the United States. Meanwhile, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) in Japan are readying their respective lunar probes. ESA's SMART-1 and NASDA's Selene spacecraft are being readied for launch.

The Moon still has much to teach us, counters Mike Duke, a space scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

"It's important to know more about the science of the Moon. We won't really understand the origin and early evolution of our Solar System until we understand the origin of the Moon. It's clearly a question that we don't have the full answer to," Duke said.

Much of the science that can be done from lunar orbit has been done, Duke said. "We need to send missions to the surface to get the next scale of understanding."

And there is a solid list of lunar longings that scientists are hungry to answer. One of the most intriguing: Could life have formed on the Moon?

Duke said that around four-and-a-half billion years ago, the scene was one in which organic-rich objects bombarded the lunar surface. Intense energy released from these impacts was long-lived, making it a nice environment for life to possibly take hold on the Moon.

"In fact, there's probably just about as much reason to think that life formed on the Moon in early lunar periods as there is reason to believe that there's life on Mars now," Duke said.

Would nagging questions about the origin and past history of the Moon spark a scientific rationale for replanting footprints on the lunar landscape. Duke doesn't think so.

"We really need to push for human settlement on the Moon. That will advance the cause of science. Self-sufficient lunar settlements will be of maximum benefit to the scientific exploration of the Moon," Duke said.

What's needed is a detailed global assessment of the Moon, said Alan Binder, director of the Lunar Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

Binder is a major proponent of a commercial data purchase plan. He sees it as the most cost effective way to shed more light on the Moon, not just for scientific reasons but to help define the potential for economic utilization of Earth's natural satellite.

Due to the steady pace of revelations about other worlds within our solar system, Binder points out that "our next door neighbor in the heavens, the Moon, is swiftly becoming one of our least explored celestial bodies."

Binder is no stranger in a strange land when it comes to the Moon. He was principal investigator for NASA's Lunar Prospector that took a lunar look-see in 1998-1999. A key observation made by the probe was the detection of hydrogen at the Moon's north and south poles. Those concentrations of hydrogen could be locked up in molecules of water ice.

"We mapped hydrogen and infer water," Binder told SPACE.com. The certainty level that Lunar Prospector detected water on the Moon, said the scientist, is in the 95 percent range.

"Everything we see in the data seems to say it is water. But until we're on the surface you don't know," Binder said. That water ice, if present, is held captive in shadowed craters at both lunar poles. In terms of quantity, north and south reservoirs combined, a few hundred million metric tons may be ready to tap, he said.

Unquestionably, this type of resource could be harvested to yield drinkable water, oxygen and fuel. Those resources could sustain a long-term human presence on the Moon, Binder said.