MOFFETT
FIELD, California — One of the host of challenges facing NASA as the agency plans
to rekindle robotic and human exploration of the moon is the development of a
corps of investigators and technologies suitable for long-term missions akin to
the research stations that dot Antarctica.
Pete
Worden, director of the NASA Ames Research Center, called the establishment of
a permanently occupied outpost on the moon as the "next step" toward the
settlement of the solar system — one that will be international in nature.
"Unlike the
last time we went to the moon...everybody is going to the moon now. There are at
least a dozen proposals I know of from various countries to go to the moon,"
Worden said. And as NASA makes plans for the scientific research it will
conduct there, a key priority is restocking the community of lunar researchers.
Carrying
out prolonged research on that distant and dusty world calls for new insight
into the impact of the lunar environment on machinery
and people. Also, how best to use the moon as an observational platform is
being appraised — not only to investigate deep space phenomenon via
astrophysical and heliophysical instruments, but also emplacement on the moon
of Earth-observing devices.
"This is
going to open a new era of scientific understanding of not just the moon and
the formation of the Earth-moon system, but how we can live on another world,"
Worden told the audience of some 500 leading scientists, engineers and specialists
in other disciplines who convened here July 20-23 at the behest of the newly
launched NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI). Managed by the Ames Research
Center, the NLSI has been set up to tackle scientific pursuits "of the moon...on
the moon...and from the moon."
Lunar
science sales job
To fire up interest
in Moon exploration, NASA released last June a Cooperative Agreement Notice
that solicited proposals to further NLSI objectives as well as the space
agency's overall future
lunar exploration needs. Those proposals are due at the end of this month.
"I think
the way to sell it is that we're going to the Moon as a step beyond," said Chris
McKay, an Ames-based space scientist who convened the NASA Lunar Science
Conference. "The other is that the moon is an interesting enough place to stay
as well. People talk about exit strategies on the moon...to touch base, leave and
go to Mars. I think that's dumb."
McKay likened
an outpost on the moon to the permanent research base in Antarctica - an encampment
that has been operating for 50 years that is a science-driven activity that's
motivated by broad interests of the United States as a nation.
"If we can
work in Antarctica for 50 years, and still want to go back and do more...the moon
also is at least as interesting as Antarctica," McKay told SPACE.com.
"There's still a lot of science to be done on the moon. It's a natural world with
natural complexity."
As for the
dispatching of humans to Mars, McKay said: "We're never going to have a
long-term, 50-year plus research base on Mars if we can't figure out how to do
that on the moon. So let's figure out how to do it on the moon!"
Robust
international interest
When looking at
the moon, David Morrison, the interim director of the NLSI, said it's an object
that is our nearest neighbor in space...a place that's going to have a multitude
of mostly small satellites and landers over the next decade. "The moon is
hot...or cool...depending on what your generation is."
Morrison said that
there is a very robust
international interest in lunar exploration. He highlighted the nearly two
years of orbiting the moon in 2004-2006 by the European Space Agency's SMART-1,
and also flagged the fact that both Japan and China have orbiters presently
circling the Moon, with India to send off its lunar orbiter in a few months.
That global
interest in the moon could possibly use more coordination, Morrison noted, with
the NLSI perhaps helping in this regard. "But I don't think we have to go sell
the moon. I think it sold itself," he told SPACE.com.
Going back
to the moon is extremely important, said James Green, director of NASA's
Planetary Science Division in Washington, D.C.
"But I'm
here to tell you, it's not your father's Oldsmobile," he said, contrasting past
lunar exploration with today's 21st century agenda. "With humans
going back, the lunar environment needs to be studied...and studied well."
Addressing
an audience question regarding stability of lunar science funding given the
political winds of change due to a new U.S. President, Green responded: "If I
were a betting man I would say the lunar program is here to stay."
Arrive,
survive, and thrive
Paul Spudis, a senior lunar
scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, suggested that the
expertise needed to live
and work off-planet can be honed on the moon. Those skills are to "arrive,
survive, and thrive."
"I've been trying to get NASA to
adopt a mission statement of why we're going to the moon...not six themes, not
182 different sub-goals." The sentence that encapsulates the mission is, he
said: "We're going to the moon to learn the skills we need to live and work
productively on another world."
Spudis advised that the challenge for
NASA's vision of space exploration is to architect a program that uses small
incremental and cumulative steps to build a capability over time. "It's not the
next NASA program. It is not an entitlement to the science community. It is not
a rocket-building program. It is a strategic direction," he said.
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