Living on the Moon

Interview with James Carpenter, Lead for Moon and Mars Science and Moon Utilisation Manager for the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration

Why are we returning to the Moon?
Well, there’s a lot of different answers to that. From a scientific perspective, we are witnessing a renewed interest in the Moon. Despite the period of low activity that followed the Apollo missions, the samples collected during those missions have provided an extremely rich body of information, still under examination today, which has left us with more questions than answers. At the same time, the orbital missions around the Moon in recent years have given us a global view that we didn’t have before. And the combination of this evidence (the global view and the returned samples) has shown us that the Moon is much more diverse than we had understood. It is, in fact, a “recorder” of the whole history of the Solar System, including the era of the great impacts. When we look at it, we see very large craters that formed at the same time as the Earth and the whole inner Solar System were taking shape, which is also around the time to which the first observed traces of potential life on our planet date back. On Earth, however, the geological record of that era is pretty much lost, and the only place where it can be read is the Moon. In its volcanic materials and on its surface, we have captured chemical traces of everything that has happened since its formation, over billions of years, so it also serves as a model for understanding how all the planets formed and evolved; it is an extremely valuable archive. But the interest in the Moon today is also due to its potential as a source of resources.

We know that there is water ice at its poles, and although we do not know whether it is accessible, how much there is, or if it will ever be useful, there is the hypothesis that it could be used in situ, as a source of propellant for operations in deep space. We also know that the Moon has metals and rare earth elements – including, perhaps, helium-3, a potential source of fuel for nuclear fusion in the future. Today we are not yet able to assess the usefulness of these resources, but we are building the knowledge that will allow us to make decisions in the future. And while we carry out this reconnaissance, we are also setting our stall on the Moon: the Moon today is like Antarctica a hundred years ago, a continent larger than Europe, really difficult to get to, which could prove to be strategic. For this reason, several nations are taking part in exploration; they are interested in the science, certainly, but also in being there, in establishing a presence, and in showcasing, from that privileged position, their technological capabilities. At the moment, in this regard, China is leading the way. It has an extraordinary lunar program, increasingly complex from one phase to the next, which is now seeing the merging of the robotic and human programmes. In the United States, too, there is a big push, especially commercial, to return humans to the Moon, with the intention of building a base there. Europe itself aspires to go to the Moon with its own resources and is working on landing, mobility and energy capabilities, with the aim of securing its own access to the Moon and ensuring a leading role. The norms, at an international level, for how to work together in this new continent are still entirely to be written, and it is important to take part in drafting them, to have a voice. In ten, twenty, thirty years’ time, I expect to see on the Moon infrastructures on a national basis – European, US, Chinese – probably associated with resources of interest. But I also hope for a shared international scientific infrastructure on the Moon, where we can work together in a peaceful and cooperative way, to do and learn things that would be impossible any other way.