NASA Plans For Humans To Live On The Moon ‘This Decade,’ Official Tells BBC (2023)

FAQs

Will humans ever live on the Moon? ›

Humans are on track to live and work on the moon by 2030, a NASA official has said. "We're going to be sending people down to the surface and they're going to be living on that surface and doing science," said Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft program for NASA, the BBC reported Sunday.

The US space agency, Nasa, has revealed conclusive evidence of water on the Moon.

If all goes according to plan, the Artemis 2 mission will follow in 2024, sending astronauts around the moon and back. Artemis 3 will put astronauts down on the moon, near the lunar south pole, with the aid of SpaceX's Starship vehicle. This landmark mission is targeted for 2025 or 2026.

The Artemis 1 mission will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the moon no earlier than late May 2022. Today's rollout is a debut of sorts for the rocket and will kick off a month of pad tests that, NASA hopes, will include a "wet dress rehearsal" to fuel the rocket for the first time.

The head of Nasa's Orion lunar spacecraft programme has said humans could be active on the Moon for “durations” before 2030.

Among the stunning variety of worlds in our solar system, only Earth is known to host life.

In going to the Moon, NASA is laying the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars. The Moon will provide a proving ground to test technologies and resources that will take humans to Mars and beyond, including building a sustainable, reusable architecture.

Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. The main reason for this was money. The cost of getting to the Moon was, ironically, astronomical.

Looking up at the moon in the night sky, you would never imagine that it is slowly moving away from Earth. But we know otherwise. In 1969, NASA's Apollo missions installed reflective panels on the moon. These have shown that the moon is currently moving 3.8 cm away from the Earth every year (opens in new tab).

The Artemis program intends to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The major components of the program are the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion spacecraft, Lunar Gateway space station and the commercial Human Landing Systems.

Are there any plans to go to the Moon again? ›

The second Artemis mission should fly around the Moon no earlier than 2024, this time with astronauts on board. The third mission will land people on the Moon — including the first woman and the first person of colour.

Of course, those conditions don't exist today. The NASA workforce is one-tenth of what it used to be and funds are limited. The last 45 years have been spent building space shuttles and the International Space Station, which is why we don't have the technology to take people back to the moon.

Human spaceflight

Wentian was successfully launched and docked to the space station on 24 July 2022, while Mengtian was launched on 31 October 2022 and was docked to the space station later that day. On 29 November 2022 with Shenzhou 15 docking to the Tiangong space station, China started its first crew handover.

Nasa, the United States space agency, plans to launch its next Moon mission in 2024. Called Artemis II, it will take astronauts to orbit the Moon. The US Agency is due to launch the Artemis III mission in 2025 or 2026, landing the first woman and the first person of colour on the Moon.

Calculations of the evolution of the Earth/Moon system tell us that with this rate of separation that in about 15 billion years the Moon will stop moving away from the Earth. Now, our Sun is expected to enter its Red Giant phase in about 6 to 7 billion years.

Moon's 'wobble' to shift in 2030, NASA says. Here's why that's bad for coastal cities. As the moon orbits around the Earth, the two celestial bodies, together with the sun, line up in ways that influence how gravity acts on our planet.

Habitability. Robert Zubrin has pointed out that Titan possesses an abundance of all the elements necessary to support life, saying "In certain ways, Titan is the most hospitable extraterrestrial world within our solar system for human colonization." The atmosphere contains plentiful nitrogen and methane.

Kepler-452b (sometimes quoted to be an Earth 2.0 or Earth's Cousin based on its characteristics; also known by its Kepler Object of Interest designation KOI-7016.01) is a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the inner edge of the habitable zone of the sun-like star Kepler-452 and is the only planet in the system ...

IN 4.5 billion years of Earthly history, life as we know it arose just once. Every living thing on our planet shares the same chemistry, and can be traced back to “LUCA”, the last universal common ancestor.

Three (Venus, Earth, and Mars) out of eight planets might be able to support life. Based on recent discoveries of planets outside of our Solar System, it was estimated that 1 in 5 planets could exist in the habitable zone of their star: Average lifetime of a planet.

Why do humans want to go back to the Moon? ›

“We want to stay on the lunar surface and learn on the lunar surface so that we can get the most science and know how we're going to go to Mars,” said Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “On Apollo, we did incredible science at the equator.

The moon is a time capsule, a pristine record of how things were at the start of the solar system. From astronomy to studying the moon's water ice, science will be more easily done in person. Once we are there, we will learn to recycle efficiently and use renewable energy, things we should have done years ago on Earth.

Immediately after Gagarin's flight, President Kennedy wanted to know what the United States could do in space to take the lead from the Soviets. President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961, declaring to Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February 1966.

NASA's total budget was cut and the remaining program of human flights was redirected toward the less expensive Apollo-Soyus joint flight with the USSR, the three Skylad missions (the first space station), and eventually the Space Shuttle and International Space Station.

It is the pull of the Moon's gravity on the Earth that holds our planet in place. Without the Moon stabilising our tilt, it is possible that the Earth's tilt could vary wildly. It would move from no tilt (which means no seasons) to a large tilt (which means extreme weather and even ice ages).

In the Northern Hemisphere, the different lunar seas make up the 'Man in the Moon's' face. The Seas of Serenity and Rain are his eyes; the Sea of Clouds forms his mouth; and the Seas of Islands and Vapours make up his nose. However, the Man in the Moon is just one interpretation of the Moon's features.

Last year, NASA found that the Moon's surface is an ever-changing landscape of cracks, wrinkled ridges and basins. An expansive survey of more than 12,000 lunar images proved the surface of the Moon is constantly cracking and shifting under stress.

In short, the sun is getting farther away from Earth over time. On average, Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun, according to NASA (opens in new tab). However, its orbit is not perfectly circular; it's slightly elliptical, or oval-shaped.

Six missions landed humans on the Moon, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Apollo 13 was intended to land; however, it was restricted to a flyby due to a malfunction aboard the spacecraft. All nine crewed missions returned safely to the Earth.

How many times has humanity gone to the Moon? ›

The United States would go on to complete six crewed missions to the moon that landed a total of 12 astronauts (all men) from 1969 to 1972 in a series of Apollo missions numbering up to Apollo 17.

NASA Artemis. With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.

China has also announced the goal of landing taikonauts on the moon by the end of this decade. Nasa, meanwhile, recently completed the 26-day Artemis I mission to take pictures of the lunar surface. Future missions are designed toward establishing more activity on the moon. However, the US is also focused on Mars.

Although you might think it would be cool, humans could not live on the moon! (Maybe one day in the future…) The moon has almost no atmosphere, so there's no air for us to breathe. There is no water on the moon either, and we need to drink water to survive.

The Moon currently moves away from us at a rate of 3.8cm/year (1.5"/yr). BUT this 'lunar retreat' rate has varied from 0.13 28 cm/year over the last 4.5 billion years. It has now been shown that the Moon is moving away from the Earth at a rate of about 3.8 cm per year.

Startup Aquarian Space has plans to bring WiFi to the moon in under two years. The company just received $650,000 in seed funding to deliver high-speed internet to the moon, and maybe even Mars.

Would a cell phone work on the moon? Firstly, let's get the obvious out of the way: no, a smartphone can't make or receive calls in space, as it's reliant on ground-based antennas.

“While the Moon doesn't have the level of interference found in a neighborhood full of houses and trees, it also does not have the advantage of an existing infrastructure of power, back feeds, and even a lunar internet, all of which need to be supplied,” said Oleson.

Exploration of the Solar System

NASA plans to launch the Psyche spacecraft, an orbiter mission that will explore the origin of planetary cores by studying the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, in October 2023 on a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.

There is a strong consensus among cosmologists that the shape of the universe is considered "flat" (parallel lines stay parallel) and will continue to expand forever.

What is NASA's latest discovery? ›

In 2020, Gilbert and others announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds. The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth's size and orbits the star every 10 days.

But what has become of the six American flags planted there by astronauts? Cameras attached to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have photographed five of the six flags left by astronauts from the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Artemis 1 mission will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the moon no earlier than late May 2022. Today's rollout is a debut of sorts for the rocket and will kick off a month of pad tests that, NASA hopes, will include a "wet dress rehearsal" to fuel the rocket for the first time.

Artemis I isn't the only lunar mission set for 2022. Space agencies around the world are gearing up for visits to our lunar neighbour.

The gravitational pull of the moon moderates Earth's wobble, keeping the climate stable. That's a boon for life. Without it, we could have enormous climate mood swings over billions of years, with different areas getting extraordinarily hot and then plunging into long ice ages.

Now, astronomer Jason Barnes says that life on our planet would endure even without a moon, a finding that might increase the number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.

Moons outnumber planets in our solar system, and moons with liquid water oceans outnumber planets with oceans here too. If our solar system isn't exceptional — and there's no reason to think it is — then it's highly likely that moons make up the largest habitable real estate of the universe.

Humans are on track to live and work on the Moon by 2030, a NASA official has said. "We're going to be sending people down to the surface and they're going to be living on that surface and doing science," said Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft program for NASA, the BBC reported Sunday.

So, why haven't they sent humans back to the moon yet? The two primary causes are money and priorities. The race to put people on the moon was sparked in 1962 by US President John F. Kennedy's 'We Choose to Go to the Moon' address, in which he pledged that by the end of the decade, an American would walk on the moon'.

Other reasons likely contribute to the disinterest in lunar colonization. For one, the Moon lacks an atmosphere to protect human visitors from radiation and space rock impacts. Mars' atmosphere may not be as robust as the Earth's, but it's more robust than the Moon's by a long shot.

What would happen if we live on the moon? ›

The moon has almost no atmosphere, so there's no air for us to breathe. There is no water on the moon either, and we need to drink water to survive. Days and nights on the moon last over two weeks long! This means the surface reaches super hot and cold temperatures: as high as 123°C or as low as −233°C.

A moon "wobble" will contribute to an increase in severe flooding in the mid-2030s, NASA has warned. The moon's orbit, which affects the Earth's tides, has a natural "wobble" every 18.6 years that causes extremely high and low tides.

NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen a day to survive. So 630kg oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years (or just over).

On the moon there is no atmosphere, which means there is no medium present. Since sound needs a medium for its propagation it cannot travel. So when two persons on the surface of the moon talk to each other they cannot talk to each other.

The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February 1966.

Images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera more than 40 years later proved Aldrin right. Unlike the other Apollo sites, there is no longer an American flag still standing at the place where humankind first made contact with the lunar surface 50 years ago on July 20.

In recent years, scientists have discovered a large amount of exoplanets, but close to none of them could actually support human life.

The type of life that might inhabit Europa likely would not be powered by photosynthesis – but by chemical reactions. Europa's surface is blasted by radiation from Jupiter. That's a bad thing for life on the surface – it couldn't survive.

Potential for Life

The surface of Pluto is extremely cold, so it seems unlikely that life could exist there. At such cold temperatures, water, which is vital for life as we know it, is essentially rock-like. Pluto's interior is warmer, however, and some think there could even be an ocean deep inside.

There are yet no plans for building space settlement by any large-scale organization, either government or private. However, many proposals, speculations, and designs for space settlements have been made through the years, and a considerable number of space colonization advocates and groups are active.

Why we shouldn't send humans to Mars? ›

Sending human travelers to Mars would require scientists and engineers to overcome a range of technological and safety obstacles. One of them is the grave risk posed by particle radiation from the sun, distant stars and galaxies.

Astronauts receive 10x the amount of radiation exposure as we do on Earth. Such high exposure can damage the immune system, causing astronauts to be susceptible to infection while in space. Long-term exposure can damage cells and DNA, leading to cataracts and cancers.