Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff Lauren vog Obam here. NASA has announced that it has selected a dozen payloads of scientific equipment that it plans to fly to the Moon on private commercial rockets and landers. The missions planned for later in twenty nineteen are an early step toward achieving the space agency's overarching goal to send astronauts back to the Moon via commercial spacecraft.
In NASA's renewed focus on the Moon reflects a late seventeen policy shift by the Trump administration, which decided that these space agencies should return to the Moon, which was last visited by Apolo seventeen astronauts back in December of nineteen seventy two. Previously, the Obama administration had abandoned a planned lunar mission, partly because of cost, in favor of
focusing upon going to Mars in the twenty thirties. We spoke with Steve Clark, the Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration in NASA's Science Mission A Directorate. He explained that the missions flown by commercial lunar payload services will include a mixture of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations. He said, we want to fly a mixture as much as we can, so they collectively can provide data to the science community and to the folks who are designing the next human lander.
The scientific instruments sent to the Moon will be, Clark said, trying to characterize the lunar surface, looking for hydrogen molecules and actual traces of water or water ice in the soil, and looking for various other elements there on the lunar surface. But those studies will do more than just add to our knowledge of Earth's natural satellite. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein said an a press release. We know there are volatiles at the poles on the Moon, and quite frankly, that
water ice could represent rocket fuel. If we have the capacity to generate rocket fuel from the surface of the Moon and get them into orbit around the Moon, we could use that to build a fueling depot. On the technology side, one payload will include solar energy technology to attempt to advance the engineering of solar cells, hopefully making them more efficient. That will benefit space missions that are dependent upon solar energy, but the work will have applications
back on Earth as well. Other technology being tested involves entry, descent and landing systems, which will help improve the design of future lunar landers, including the human lander that eventually will take astronauts to the lunar surface again. NASA's long range plan also calls for building a lunar orbital station in the twenties, which will serve as a platform both for observing the lunar surface and staging manned exploration missions.
Having instruments on the lunar surface as well as in orbit around the Moon will give humanity to new valuable vantage points from which to explore the Moon and beyond. Unlike the Apollo program, the commercial space industry will be heavily involved in the effort transporting astronauts to the orbital station and down to the surface. The agency already has announced plans to work with space companies to develop reuse
a lunar landers. Those spacecraft could shuttle back and forth between the lunar orbital platform and the surface of the Moon. We also spoke via email with Dale scran, the executive vice president of the National Space Society, which is a nonprofit group whose goal is to promote a space faring civilization.
He said that they support NASA's strategy. Quote the fundamental advantage of a lunar orbital system in the support of lunar exploration and development is that it can be a gas station where reusable lunar landers dock and are refueled. NASA's recently announced human lander reference design, which features two reusable components, the ascent stage and space tug, along with a tanker to bring fuel to the lunar orbital station,
are a constructive but partial step in this direction. At this point, Scran says that putting boots on the Moon in the near future no longer should be viewed as a desirable goal in itself, but rather as a means to further a larger plan of space colonization. He said, humans on the Moon should grow organically out of what we are doing on the Moon, not appear as a
stunt in imitation of Apollo. Two potential goals for lunar return include mining oxygen to fuel future Mars trips and building a radio telescope on the dark side of the Moon to take advantage of the unique radio quiet on the side of the Moon faces away from the Earth. Both of these goals will almost certainly include humans on the lunar surface, but boots are not the primary goal. We will certainly keep you in the loop as more
news comes to light. Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeartMedia and how Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics that more than scratch the surface, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.