NASA wants to return to the moon this year

NASA has big plans to return to the moon, but private companies will do the bulk of the work. (Credit: NASA)

In November, NASA contracted nine private space flight companies to bid on future projects. Yesterday, they explained what these projects would be at an industry forum. From the beginning of this year, NASA hopes to send commercial landers on the lunar surface as a first step towards returning to the moon, this time for good.

Long list of lunar tasks

There is still a lot of work to be done before permanent or long-term lunar activities can begin. The first tasks will be to practice launching and landing on the moon and to answer questions about its surface. NASA wants to see many technologies on the ground before humans are sent back to the moon – and a good part of it is also supposed to replace the future colony of Mars.

Part of this technology is related to a recent buzzword among the space community: in situ resource utilization, or ISRU. It means using materials and resources already available on the Moon and a day on Mars, rather than carrying all our resources with us, as was the case for space missions. This usually means using solar energy to produce energy. On the moon, this will also involve extracting water, which can be used to drink or to propel rockets. The hydrogen and oxygen that make up water are powerful fuels.

The commercial lunar partners will therefore work on how to exploit and recycle the resources on the Moon and make them available for future use by the mission. They will test the home for future crewed missions. They will prove that they can collect materials on the lunar surface and send them back into space or onto the Earth. And they will establish communication networks between robots on the surface of the moon, navigation stations in lunar orbit and mission control on Earth.

All of these commercial efforts will also need to be part of NASA's planned lunar bridge. It would be a space station orbiting the moon that would serve as Grand Central Station for robotic missions or crewed on the lunar surface, or even for missions in deep space. NASA hopes to open the bridge by 2026, with the first power and propulsion elements coming into orbit in 2022.