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Nicholas Wall ESCI 103 9/17/13 Back To The Moon?

When Apollo 11 landed and Neil Armstrong first stepped foot onto an orbital sphere that wasnt Earth in 1969, headlines were made around the world. We, as humanity, finally landed on the moon. Though this feat is subject to its critics, it was a very important part of our history as a species, as it marked the first time a human being was able to successfully land on something in our solar system that wasnt our own planet. The first missions to the moon were monumental in learning about our moon and what we, up until then, could only speculate about with it. Moon rocks were able to be brought back to Earth to be studies, in the hopes of understanding more about our history and the history of the planet. It has been a long time since any spacecraft has been on the surface of the moon, since 1976. And, it has been even longer since any human has set foot on the surface of the moon, since 1972. Now, there have been research vehicles sent into orbit around the moon, but none have been set down to do any research or sampling on the surface. Why havent we been back in over 40 years? Have we learned all there is to learn about the moon? Of course, there is much we could learn about the moon yet still. This was the focal point of a study in Europe in 1992, to determine what we could learn about the moon if we decided to go back up there. They found that basically there are three main ideas of what we could learn: science of the moon, science on the moon, and

science from the moon. So, what could we possibly learn about ourselves and what else is out there if NASA decided to reopen the lunar projects? First, one important thing we may learn from the moon has to do with all of its craters. We do know that the moon is inactive, that is, there are no active volcanoes. The craters we seen on the moon come from being hit by space rocks, or asteroids. By studying these craters more in depth, we can get a better idea of how old the craters are, and possibly inform us of our own planets history with asteroids. A widely debated topic in science is the extinction of the dinosaurs, thought by some to be due to a massive asteroid hitting Earth many millions of years ago. So, if we knew more about the history of asteroid impact on the moon, it may help us discover more about the possibility of impacts of asteroids in Earths future. In addition, by studying our moon more, we may learn more about the possibility of life on other planets. The moon, having not changed much in its history of being in our solar system, can offer clues as to how life began on our planet. When our solar system began billions of years ago, some sort of extraplanetary matter came from somewhere to begin life on Earth. Did this matter come from some ancient asteroid or comet? Is it possible that matter came from a meteor which happened to land on the moon causing a crater? We know that the moon has ice on it, and water is essential to life as we know it, so was there life on our moon, albeit briefly before it died from lack of necessary nutrients? Are there organisms that can survive up in space, without water or sunlight? Studying our moon up close can offer more clues to help answer these questions.

I chose this article because I was intrigued by the suggestions the authors hypothesized about why going back up to the moon would be beneficial to science. There is so much about space and where life came from that we dont know or have yet to discover. Yet, perhaps we can start to unearth some of those answers by simply studying more in depth the one orbital body our planet has that we can actually fly to. Of course, our government has a big say in the space program, and right now NASA is being put on the backburner in favor of other priorities. But, if and when the space program does get back up and running, will we see man going back up to the moon to look for the answers to some of lifes greatest questions?

Source: I.A. Crawford, M. Anand, C.S. Cockell, H. Falcke, D.A. Green, R. Jaumann, M.A. Wieczorek, Back to the Moon: The scientific rationale for resuming lunar surface exploration, Planetary and Space Science, Volume 74, Issue 1, December 2012, Pages 314, ISSN 0032-0633, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2012.06.002.

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