What science should NASA do as it returns humans to the moon? Plenty, says a report released today by the National Research Council (NRC) of The National Academies. And in large part it's the same science that the scientific community has been pushing for years--an ambitious effort to understand the origins and evolution of rocky bodies like the moon, and Earth.
Last March, NASA asked the NRC to prioritize research objectives for the robotic spacecraft and then astronauts that will scout the moon's surface over the next couple of decades. In response, the study committee, headed by George Paulikas, a retired executive of the space technology firm The Aerospace Corporation, ranks largely basic-science objectives. The first is new funding for lunar science data analysis. This data will be coming in torrents thanks to endeavors such as the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission and missions to precede LRO by India, China, and Japan.
The next priority is robotic and human exploration of the South Pole-Aitken basin, a huge impact scar mostly on the back side of the moon. That was the top lunar recommendation of a 2002 NRC report titled New Frontiers in the Solar System (ScienceNOW 11 July 2002). Then comes a global instrument network for probing the interior, followed by rock sample returns, the scientifically-informed selection of human landing sites, and analysis of any icy polar deposits. The search for water ice in the deep-chill of permanent shadows--a possible source of rocket fuel for trips back home or on to Mars--is a prime focus of LRO.
"The science hasn't changed," says committee member Carlé Pieters of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The objectives remain the same as when robots were going to do all the exploration but lost out to human exploration. Now NASA has to consider just how much more science can piggyback on the return to the moon than it managed in the days of Apollo.
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