Why America wants to send astronauts to the South Pole of the Moon

In December 2017, About a year after taking office, Donald Trump asked NASA to develop a plan to send American astronauts back to the moon. Since then, the government has published little detail on the nature of this mission. On Tuesday at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence unveiled a big piece of information: when American astronauts return to the moon, they will land at the lunar south pole. Why there? As there was ice at the moon's poles, which, according to Pence, could be turned into rocket fuel.

"In this century we are returning to the moon with new ambitions," said Pence. "Not only to travel there, but also to extract oxygen from the lunar rocks that will supply our ships, use nuclear energy to extract water from the permanently shaded craters of the South Pole and pilot a new one. generation of spaceships that will allow us to reach Mars in months, not years. "

Until ten years ago, planetary scientists were almost certain that there was no water on the moon because it did not have a substantial atmosphere. However, over the last 10 years, the badysis of data collected by the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter of the Indian Space Research Organization has "proved" that there is evidence that ice exists on the moon . Most of the ice detected by Chandrayaan-1 is in craters at the south pole, permanently shaded by the slight axial inclination of the moon. Temperatures never exceed -250 degrees Fahrenheit in these craters, which prevents ice from evaporating into space.

As pointed out Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator, at the National Space Board meeting, NASA scientists felt that "there could be more than one." trillion pounds of ice at the lunar poles based on Chandrayaan-1 data. This, said Bridenstine, "means support for life, air to breathe, water to drink, [and] hydrogen and oxygen, which is the rocket propulsion on the surface of the moon. "

Pence and Bridenstine spoke as if we already had the technology to exploit this lunar ice as a means of survival and fuel, but scientists say there is still a long way to go before that is possible.

The first major obstacle to overcome by NASA? Finish the Space Launch System (SLS), the agency's huge new generation rocket, which has been suffering from delays and budget problems since the start of the project ten years ago. The SLS was to send a test mission of an unprepared Orion capsule around the moon in 2020, but the agency announced earlier this month that this would probably not happen until 2021. Delays are spawning. delays, pushing the first crewed mission to the lunar surface. to 2028, a target date, according to Pence, "insufficient" at the meeting of the National Council of Space, where he called for a mission for 2024.

Although NASA is accelerating the development of SLS to reach the Trump administration's aggressive target date for 2024, the landing at the South Pole adds an extra level of difficulty to the mission. "The South Pole is a great place to send humans and we absolutely have to send them there," said Ryan Watkins, research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, who researched lunar landing sites. . "It's more than other landing sites." The orientation of the lunar south pole can create communication problems between astronauts on the moon and control of the mission on Earth, says Watkins. The lunar south pole also presents a more rugged terrain compared to the equatorial region of the moon, where the Apollo 11 astronauts landed in 1969.

"In my opinion, it would be better to send maybe humans elsewhere [on the moon] and test how to extract these resources, then send them to the South Pole at the next mission, "says Watkins.

It is also the technological capabilities to extract and convert lunar ice. Jack Burns, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado and a member of NASA's presidential transition team, said at Tuesday's Space Council meeting that we do not know much about lunar water, let alone how to turn into rocket fuel on the moon.

"Before laying down shoes on the ground at the poles, we urgently need a mission of robotic ice-water prospecting at the lunar poles," Burns said. "We do not understand what ice water looks like beneath the surface. Is it finely mixed with the lunar regolith or is it blocks of ice? Both are theoretically possible, but would require very different extraction techniques. "

The Trump administration's plan to send astronauts to the southern lunar pole is certainly bold, but before doing the "next giant leap", it might be interesting to determine what we will do once we are there. .

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