EXPLORING THE MOON: PRESENT AND FUTURE
We’ve been studying the Moon for over 50 years, and thanks to a host of pioneering missions we now know more about our satellite than ever before
Although there hasn’t been a manned mission to the Moon since 1972 and there were no soft landings at all until 1966, we’re still exploring our satellite. Currently the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is still circling the Moon. It launched on 18 June 2009, and became the first NASA mission to the Moon in more than a decade. The LRO is meant to be a precursor to future manned missions, and was originally designed to spend just a year in orbit. However, the mission was extended several times. It was designed to extensively map the Moon in high resolution, explore the potential of ice in the polar regions, study the deep space radiation, and continue to map the surface of the Moon. The other current NASA mission is ARTEMIS, an extension of an earlier satellite mission. Two small probes have been orbiting the Moon together since summer 2011, having previously performed lunar and Earth flybys.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was launched along with the LRO and considered an inexpensive way to look for water ice, and it was successful. The LCROSS discovered ice in the Cabeus crater near the Moon’s south pole after its upper stage impacted as planned on 9 October 2009. Two small spacecraft under the name GRAIL A and GRAIL B were launched on 10 September 2011 and impacted on 17 December 2012, having collected data to help understand how terrestrial planets have evolved. Japan, India and China have all had lunar probes in the last six years as well.