Why Is NASA Going Back to the Moon?

NASA is planning a new series of moon missions, with the goal of sending astronauts back by 2028. Learn what they're hoping to build and study there in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Stuff Lauren vog Obam here. NASA has announced that it
has selected a dozen payloads of scientific equipment that it
plans to fly to the Moon on private commercial rockets
and landers. The missions planned for later in twenty nineteen
are an early step toward achieving the space agency's overarching

(00:24):
goal to send astronauts back to the Moon via commercial spacecraft.
In NASA's renewed focus on the Moon reflects a late
seventeen policy shift by the Trump administration, which decided that
these space agencies should return to the Moon, which was
last visited by Apolo seventeen astronauts back in December of
nineteen seventy two. Previously, the Obama administration had abandoned a

(00:47):
planned lunar mission, partly because of cost, in favor of
focusing upon going to Mars in the twenty thirties. We
spoke with Steve Clark, the Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration
in NASA's Science Mission A Directorate. He explained that the
missions flown by commercial lunar payload services will include a
mixture of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations. He said, we

(01:10):
want to fly a mixture as much as we can,
so they collectively can provide data to the science community
and to the folks who are designing the next human lander.
The scientific instruments sent to the Moon will be, Clark said,
trying to characterize the lunar surface, looking for hydrogen molecules
and actual traces of water or water ice in the soil,
and looking for various other elements there on the lunar surface.

(01:33):
But those studies will do more than just add to
our knowledge of Earth's natural satellite. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein
said an a press release. We know there are volatiles
at the poles on the Moon, and quite frankly, that
water ice could represent rocket fuel. If we have the
capacity to generate rocket fuel from the surface of the
Moon and get them into orbit around the Moon, we

(01:53):
could use that to build a fueling depot. On the
technology side, one payload will include solar energy technology to
attempt to advance the engineering of solar cells, hopefully making
them more efficient. That will benefit space missions that are
dependent upon solar energy, but the work will have applications
back on Earth as well. Other technology being tested involves entry,

(02:15):
descent and landing systems, which will help improve the design
of future lunar landers, including the human lander that eventually
will take astronauts to the lunar surface again. NASA's long
range plan also calls for building a lunar orbital station
in the twenties, which will serve as a platform both
for observing the lunar surface and staging manned exploration missions.

(02:37):
Having instruments on the lunar surface as well as in
orbit around the Moon will give humanity to new valuable
vantage points from which to explore the Moon and beyond.
Unlike the Apollo program, the commercial space industry will be
heavily involved in the effort transporting astronauts to the orbital
station and down to the surface. The agency already has
announced plans to work with space companies to develop reuse

(02:59):
a lunar landers. Those spacecraft could shuttle back and forth
between the lunar orbital platform and the surface of the Moon.
We also spoke via email with Dale scran, the executive
vice president of the National Space Society, which is a
nonprofit group whose goal is to promote a space faring civilization.
He said that they support NASA's strategy. Quote the fundamental

(03:21):
advantage of a lunar orbital system in the support of
lunar exploration and development is that it can be a
gas station where reusable lunar landers dock and are refueled.
NASA's recently announced human lander reference design, which features two
reusable components, the ascent stage and space tug, along with
a tanker to bring fuel to the lunar orbital station,
are a constructive but partial step in this direction. At

(03:45):
this point, Scran says that putting boots on the Moon
in the near future no longer should be viewed as
a desirable goal in itself, but rather as a means
to further a larger plan of space colonization. He said,
humans on the Moon should grow organically out of what
we are doing on the Moon, not appear as a
stunt in imitation of Apollo. Two potential goals for lunar

(04:06):
return include mining oxygen to fuel future Mars trips and
building a radio telescope on the dark side of the
Moon to take advantage of the unique radio quiet on
the side of the Moon faces away from the Earth.
Both of these goals will almost certainly include humans on
the lunar surface, but boots are not the primary goal.
We will certainly keep you in the loop as more
news comes to light. Today's episode was written by Patrick

(04:33):
Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeartMedia and
how Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of
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