This year NASA announced its plan to send astronauts to the Moon by 2024 .
Astronauts have, of course, been to the lunar surface before, but NASA's Artemis mission is preparing to send humans to an area of the Moon that has never been visited before: The lunar South Pole.
In a webinar titled The Next Giant Leap: Back to the Moon and On to Mars, a reader asked:
“What’s the reason for choosing to land at the South Pole?"
Read the edited response below from Rob Chambers, Director of Human Spaceflight Strategy and Business Development for NASA contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems.
Chambers is currently working on the Orion spacecraft that will send astronauts to the Moon.
Rob Chambers: All of the Apollo landings were done near the equator, in somewhat similar conditions, in the sense that all of the landings took place on the near side. The near side does get dark, but it always faces the Earth. That means it has always been shadowed from craters, from impacts, because the Earth is in the way of oncoming asteroids and meteorites. The near side is also a little bit more homogeneous in terms of the geological, or selenological, history. If you go down to the poles, the number-one answer we’ll all give you within industry is water.
Water is the kind of "oil" of exploration. You can drink it. You can crack it for fuel – hydrogen and oxygen are the best propellants. And you can obviously breathe the oxygen. In terms of living off the land, the ISRU , the pole is a great place. The reason for this is that there are shadowed craters at the pole that never get sunlight, unlike the equator where everything gets lit up by the Sun at least once throughout the month.
The south pole location hasn’t been shielded from bombardment. The bombardment state of the Moon tells us a lot about the state of the solar-system evolution, for example, and where the Moon came from and where it’s going. That affects, to be honest, every single one of us on this planet.
What do you think? Share your comments and questions below.
Transcript
00:00:01 [music] The Moon. It’s our nearest neighbor in space, and data we gather from its features can tell us a lot about the rest of our solar system. And through the eyes of the LRO spacecraft, we can explore the lunar surface in all new ways in fascinating detail. Our tour begins on the western border, where the near side of the Moon meets the far side. The enormous feature is a lunar crater and it’s known as the Orientale basin. Here, LRO’s terrain map combines with surface gravity measurements from the GRAIL mission. This data reveals structure in the
00:00:47 lunar crust, beneath the surface, giving us a window into the geologic features of the Moon’s interior. Our next location receives little direct sunlight and has some of the coldest recorded temperatures in the solar system – the South Pole. The highlighted spots signify potential water ice, based on temperature readings from LRO’s Diviner instrument and reflectance from its laser altimeter LOLA. LOLA also allows us to peer into the darkness of Shackleton crater by bringing us this digital elevation model. It’s 21 kilometers wide, and 4 kilometers deep, but it pales in comparison to the largest known
00:01:31 impact crater in the Earth-Moon system – the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Sitting on the far side, it’s 2500 kilometers across and 13 kilometers deep. We don’t yet know exactly how old the basin is, but it was first seen in the 1960s by spacecraft flying around the far side. As much as we use LRO data to investigate areas we can’t see from Earth, we also probe familiar territory on the lunar near side, to bring back images with an all-new level of detail. This is Tycho crater; it’s around 100 million years old. Here, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera captures the central peak with a 100 meter-wide bolder at the
00:02:25 summit – the origins of which are still a mystery. Continuing across Moon’s nearside, we will arrive in an area ripe for future exploration, due to the diversity of impact and volcanic materials. It features a prominent crater so bright it’s not only visible through telescopes, but also to the naked eye. Welcome to the Aristarchus plateau. Here, infrared shows the mineral pyroxene in orange, and a splash of plagioclase in blue from Aristarchus crater. This region can tell us a lot about the rich volcanic history of the Moon. As much as we study the Moon looking for sites to visit, we
00:03:06 also look back at places we’ve already been. This is because the new data that LRO is gathering helps us reinterpret the geology of familiar places, giving scientists a better understanding of the sequence of events in early lunar history. Here, we descend to the Apollo 17 landing site in the Taurus-Littrow valley, which is deeper than the Grand Canyon. The path the astronauts took over the course of three days is shown. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera is even able to capture a view of the bottom half of the Apollo 17 Lunar Lander, which still sits on the surface, as well as the rover
00:03:46 vehicle. These images help preserve our accomplishment of human exploration on the Moon’s surface. Moving onward, we make our way to our final destination. This location contains regions that exist in permanent shadow, as well as ones that bask in nearly perpetual light. It’s the North Pole. Detailed terrain measurements by LOLA allow scientists to model sunlight and shadow at the poles over decades and centuries. Sunlit peaks and crater rims here may be ideal locations for generating solar power for future expeditions to the Moon. This updated visualization of the lunar
00:04:27 landscape stands as a testament to the functionality and abilities of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. And as the mission continues to gather data, it will provide us with many more opportunities to take a tour of our Moon. [beeping]
