Does the U.S. need to go back to the moon?
Benefits of lunar return are scientific as well as geopolitical, officials say
Jim Bridenstine was sitting in his fifth-grade language arts class in 1986 when his teacher, Mrs. Powers, rushed in, tears streaming down her face.
She wheeled a giant, boxy TV into the classroom and switched on the news.
There was the space shuttle Challenger, blowing up over and over in front of them. All seven crew members were dead.
Seventeen years later in 2003, Bridenstine again sat in front of a TV — this time in the Persian Gulf where he was stationed with the Air Force — watching the space shuttle Columbia break up upon reentry. Again, all seven crew members were dead.
These are the images of space exploration that stick with Bridenstine’s generation — a generation that was born too late to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take the first steps on the moon 50 years ago on July 20, 1969.
And that needs to change, says Bridenstine, now the space agency’s administrator.
“We need to go back to the moon and we need to have these stunning achievements,” Bridenstine said in April during the Space Symposium in Colorado. “And that’s what NASA intends to do.”
Renewed inspiration is just one of the many reasons NASA wants to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972. Science, of course, is another reason, as is the potential to mine resources from the celestial body. But it’s also geopolitically advantageous to return as more countries make their way to the moon for the first time.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to accelerate our return to the moon,” Bridenstine said.
New source of inspiration
When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon in July 1969, they did more than just beat the Soviet Union in the Space Race.
They inspired a generation of scientists and engineers.
“This was such an exciting thing that (people) embraced science and technology boldly, and it’s because of this that there was a surge in interest in STEM fields that the U.S. has today,” said Pascal Lee, cofounder and chairman of the Mars Institute, a nonprofit headquartered at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
The boost in STEM areas not only helped the country remain a technological superpower for decades, it also created a huge economic boost, Lee said.
The U.S. needs to go somewhere beyond Earth’s orbit, whether it be the moon or Mars, to achieve that sort of inspiration again, he said.
“Exploring other worlds motivates us in ways we can’t always anticipate beforehand,” said Kirsten Siebach, an assistant professor in Rice University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.
Collecting new samples
The 12 men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 all brought moon rocks home for scientific study.
And even though it’s been 50 years since the first samples were brought back, researchers still are learning from the samples today. Still, they’ll welcome additional lunar rock samples if the Trump administration’s plan to return humans to the moon comes to fruition.
Studying the geology of the moon will help scientists understand more about how other solar systems might have evolved — answering the question of whether Earth is unique or commonplace, said Ryan Zeigler, NASA’s Apollo sample curator.
“Getting samples back from the moon will give us a better understanding of where we live and where we come from,” Zeigler said.
Along with this, a return to the moon would allow NASA to not only test out technologies and habitation systems in preparation for a trip to Mars, but would also allow astronauts to explore whether there is enough water ice on the celestial body to break down and use for life support (oxygen) and propulsion (hydrogen).
The sprint to the surface of the moon in the 1960s was spurred by the Soviets, who were making great strides in space and seemingly leaving the U.S. in the dust.
So, the U.S. did what made sense politically: reached the lunar surface first.
Fifty years later, other countries finally are starting to catch up. Though the U.S. remains the only country to put humans on the moon, the Soviet Union put a probe on the surface in September 1959, as did China in December 2013 and January 2019 and Israel in April, though it crashed onto the surface.
India has plans to go to the moon, as does Japan. And in 2016, a Chinese official said the country hopes to put a man on the moon by 2036, according to the Telegraph, a British newspaper.
In response, experts say the U.S. is trying to accelerate its lunar program to keep up.
“We’re going to go where the geopolitical action is and that’s the moon,” Lee said. “The moon is a bit like Antarctica today: We conduct science there, but we’re really there because other countries are there.”