America's mission on the moon – "This time we will stay" – acquaintance

• NASA has announced that it will land people on the moon as soon as possible. By 2028, it could be time.
• To this end, a small space station in a lunar orbit must take their service. From his astronauts should begin their landing on the moon.
• In the long term, the station will serve as a stopover on the way to Mars.

On December 14, 1972, Commander Eugene Cernan and geologist Harrison Schmitt boarded the lunar module of the Apollo 17 mission back to Earth. Since then, only abandoned flags, lunar vehicles and, among other things, two golf balls on the dusty lunar soil testify to the visits of the population. However, according to the desire of the US NASA space agency, this should change as quickly as possible. As soon as possible, the astronauts should land on the moon, said NASA boss Jim Bridenstine a few days ago, perhaps as early as 2028. And not only that: "This time we will stay."

NASA responds to the wish of US President Trump to send manned missions to the Moon and from there to Mars. Unlike the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, the human presence should be more permanent this time around. "We do not just want to leave flags and footprints and not come back for 50 years," Bridenstine said. "We want it to be sustainable so that you can come and go regularly with people."

NASA does not just want to rely on its own experts. Already last November, private companies had been selected, which currently compete for orders totaling about $ 2.6 billion. The task: to bring small probes to the moon, which deposit materials there. NASA wants to bring an unmanned vehicle to the moon by 2024. The hope is that competition between private providers keeps prices low and promotes innovation.

From 2026, a small space station called Gateway to the lunar orbital platform (LOP-G) in lunar orbit take their service. She could be a kind of successor to the International Space Station ISS the life of which will probably end in the 2020s. ISS however, in its orbit only 400 kilometers above the Earth, the distance to a station in the lunar orbit would be almost a thousand times.

As surprising as the project may seem: The plans for this gateway – in German "portal" or "interface" – are quite advanced. They are driven by NASA, but Canadian, Japanese and Russian space agencies and Esa are planning to invest. The station should only have one seventh of the volume of the ISS and not be occupied permanently. A maximum of four astronauts should be able to stay there for one to three months at the same time. Various integrated experiments could automatically collect data.

The European Space Agency is working on plans for a "lunar village"

From this space station, as provided by NASA, could operate future lunar missions: partly with remote-controlled robots, which would also be part of the moon furthest from Earth, partly through a module of 39, inhabited landing. And in the long run, NASA plans to use this gateway as a step on the way to Mars. The astronauts could then be named with the new launcher and spaceship system SLS / Orion, which Nasa and Esa are developing, go first to the front door and turn there into a Mars rocket. The advantage would be that it would not be necessary to lift the full weight of a Mars spacecraft from the Earth's gravity field to get to Mars.

That all this happens, however, remains completely open. In any case, the current timetable is very ambitious. It would not be the first time that a project of this magnitude has been delayed for many years. In addition, many projects could be suspended or canceled after the next US presidential election in 2020. But experts believe that there will be a kind of human outpost on the moon in the coming decades.

Finally, the European Space Agency Esa is working on the creation of a satellite on the Earth's surface, called the "lunar village", in which astronauts could live and work. It is intended for technical and medical tests for longer stays on Mars, but also for the study of the moon itself.

Most importantly, Urs Mall of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen believes that this is extremely important. "The moon is an archive of the solar system," he says. "To read and understand these archives, we need more moon samples." Because there is no plate tectonics, no magnetic field and no protective atmosphere on the moon, every asteroid impact is recorded as on a tape recorder; this makes the moon so exciting for scientists who want to understand the history of the Earth and the solar system. In addition, the moon is much more than a simple decorative appendage of the earth: "Without a moon, you can not imagine the earth," says Mall. In fact, it would not even have a stable axis of rotation. Fixed seasons? Could you forget without the moon.

However, the question remains as to whether to really colonize the moon for billions of euros in the name of research. People on board multiply the cost of each space mission. The added value that results is controversial. Of course, one can do a lot with robots, even though it's often good to have people around oneself, says Urs Mall: "In the end, it's always a question of whether or not there's anything wrong with it. ;money."

How and when Nasa and Esa brought people back to the Moon again: it could become tight there. On 21 February already, the Israeli company Space IL wanted to send for the first time a private robot landing module on the Moon. And China also plans several other missions in the lunar program Chang & # 39; e. In the long run, the rides must be included.