To the moon and beyond

A 12-wheel vehicle lifts a haze of powder-gray dust as it makes its way onto hilly terrain. The "space truck" has a pressurized cabin, allowing the two astronauts inside to breathe without their spacesuit.

They are tired after a day spent exploring the water ice deposits a few kilometers from their base.

It's the moon in 2050.

While the rover bypasses the imposing sides of a large crater, astronauts perceive mirrors mounted on its ledge. The mirrors transmit sunlight into the crater, allowing a mining operation to extract ice water from the inside. On the left, the truck passes on a landing strip – flattened while passing in the microwave on the lunar floor – where a vehicle uphill sits, waiting to go into orbit.

The vehicle stops near the domes of a base, here at the South Pole of the Moon. Astronauts enter their homes through an airlock and remove their dusty spacesuits. Inside, a greenhouse where kale and potatoes grow emits a supernatural glow under LED lights. Team members climb the stairs to a higher level, where the base commander waits for a report.

Scenarios like this are fantastic for the moment. But it is a possible way for humans to live and work on the moon.

If we want to establish a long-term basis, we will have to take what we need from lunar resources.

Hannah Sargeant, PhD student, is working in this laboratory at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, on ​​a way to achieve this end, using a mineral called Ilmenite, abundant on the Moon.

Inside a built-in oven, the ilmenite is heated to extract oxygen, which is combined with hydrogen to get water.

"There are more than 20 ways to get water from the rocks on the moon. Ilmenite was interesting because it is quite common there and the reaction you need uses relatively little energy, "she says.

And she says she is excited at the prospect of humans returning to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

"I feel that my generation will definitely get there. I am convinced that this will happen during my lifetime, that we will have at least one permanent home orbiting the moon, and then we will continue to go and come back to the surface. "

In 2017, Donald Trump signed a space policy directive to send American astronauts back to the moon and "other destinations." NASA said it would target this goal by 2028. But the administration recently asked the space agency to postpone it until 2024, citing Chinese lunar ambitions. It did not however go unnoticed that this date would coincide with the end of Trump's second term, should he be re-elected.

This time, NASA wants to do things differently. The Moon is part of a larger ambition to explore the deep space, including Mars, and part of the plan is therefore to create a lunar outpost.

"We will not be returning to the moon to leave flags and footprints and will not be returning in 50 years," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine earlier this year. "We are going to stay here – to stay – with landers, robots, rovers and humans."

But can NASA safely organize a return mission by the deadline, since the critical equipment was neither built nor tested in flight?

"It's going to be risky," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington. But he adds, "If we are not willing to accept a certain level of risk, we have to stay on the ground. The problem is to balance the risk with the activity. "