This is a replica of the Apollo 11 Lander,
the craft that touched down on the moon's surface on 30th July 1969.
But it's now nearly 50 years
since Neil Armstrong took his first step onto the moon's surface
and 46 years since the last astronaut left the moon.
For a long time, it seemed that lunar exploration
had fallen out of fashion.
But, now, for the first time in decades,
it feels like we're on the verge of a lunar revolution.
There are a host of new missions to the moon
either in progress or on the drawing board.
And just last month, many of the world's leading lunar scientists
gathered in Manchester to discuss this surge of interest in the moon.
This month on The Sky At Night,
in the first of two programmes dedicated
to the 50th anniversary of the moon landings,
we'll be looking into this new era of lunar exploration
and asking when it will be that humans return to the moon.
Here at the Science Museum in London, they're launching
their Summer Of Space by installing a new exhibit.
The Soyuz capsule that brought Tim Peake back to Earth
from the International Space Station in 2016.
It's part of plans to commemorate the 50th anniversary
of the first Apollo landings.
But, as well as looking back, there's now a real sense
that we will soon be returning to the moon.
I was born in '72, so the year that Gene Cernan,
the last man on the moon, left the surface,
so it left a sort of legacy for me.
I'm really looking forward to getting back
to the surface of the moon,
and I think that's going to be hugely inspiring
to a brand-new generation of scientists and engineers.
This new race to the moon has already started.
The Orion Spacecraft is a collaboration between Nasa and ESA
that's been designed to carry the next generation of astronauts
towards the moon...
..where the plan is to dock with the Lunar Gateway,
a mini version of the International Space Station
that will be in permanent orbit around the moon.
From there, the crew will board a lander
and descend to the lunar surface.
Although the Orion capsule is already undergoing flight tests,
the gateway and the lunar lander
are still very much on the drawing board.
So most people thought that this was going to be a long-term project,
taking 20 or even 30 years.
But earlier this year,
the Trump administration made a surprise announcement.
It is the stated policy of this administration
and the United States of America to return American astronauts
to the moon within the next five years.
Five years seems like an impossibly tight schedule.
So while I was in Manchester,
I cornered Nasa's chief scientist Jim Green.
What's new at Nasa and the moon? There's exciting plans ahead.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, our plans now are REALLY exciting
because we've moved our timescale up.
We are planning to put the next man and the first woman
on the surface of the moon by 2024.
Which is, in space terms, is incredibly fast.
It is, it is very fast but, I mean, it's stuff we've done before.
So why does the moon matter? As Nasa's chief scientist, why,
scientifically, does the moon matter?
You know, we're constantly making enormous progress
understanding our planets with our robotic programs...
..not only Mars but even in the outer part
of the solar system with Cassini... Yeah, yeah.
..at Saturn and then Juno at Jupiter...
..flyby of Pluto.
So our initial survey of the entire solar system is now complete.
Now we're moving into a more in-depth understanding,
and that requires that we go back to the moon.
Why send people? We've talked in the past
about the great success of robotic missions to Mars,
to the outer planets you mentioned. Why people?
Well, for that you have to think a little further ahead.
And the little further ahead is Mars.
Mars is a place, much like Earth, that has an atmosphere.
It has carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
phosphorus and sulphur in its soils.
It has nitrates.
It has moisture in the soils.
We can grow food at Mars.
We actually can terraform Mars, live and work at Mars. OK?
With that, the ultimate goal, and the fact that it is far away,
what better place to practise than the moon?
And, so, a lot of things that we're going to be doing at the moon
is literally the same kind of things
that we're going to be doing at Mars.
Well, look, it's really exciting.
I want to ask you one last question, which is this. Mm-hm.
Lots of us are big fans of the space programme and Nasa...
So am I. Yeah!
..and we follow these missions and we look forward to them.
I can't think of a mission
that was developed in five years from scratch to launch. Sure, sure.
Mars 2020 has taken a decade,
because these things are complicated... Sure.
..so are we really going to get there?
Well, it's not from scratch. We've been working on it for years. OK?
We're nearly done with the development of the rocket
called the Space Launch System, SLS, that will take us there.
Our first test flights are going to be in 2020, next year.
And then we will do several before we then land humans on the surface.
You know, we're really almost probably 80/85% there.
And, so, the schedule is such that we have a lot to do,
there's a number of important things that we need to complete,
but we have the ability to do it.
What's the most difficult thing that's remaining?
What's the biggest job?
To me, it's really all about the landing system with humans.
It's all about that end phase, right,
where we actually get down to the surface.
We have a whole series of missions that are robotic
that will look, test out, get us ground truth
and then figure out where we'll go.
The astronauts are being trained on how the lunar surface looks
and where they will go and the science that we want them to do.
So we're making good progress there. Yeah. So that's what we've...
Crack that and then you can... Well, we got good time to do it.
All right. Well, good luck. Thank you.
Come back and tell us how you get on. That would be great.
All right. Invite me back. Five years' time. Five years.
Take care. Thanks, Jim. My pleasure. Thank you. Cheers.
I have to say,
I'm still very sceptical about that five-year target.
It's not clear where Nasa might get the necessary funds
and, so, we'll probably be waiting a while before we see astronauts
standing on the surface of the moon again.
But there IS a growing feeling that we WILL be returning.
There you go.
And as Maggie discovered when she visited the offices
of pioneering architects Foster + Partners,
plans are already under way for a permanent base on the moon.
I'm really excited about this, it looks fantastic.
So, yeah, what was your brief for this project?
So what you're seeing here is a project where we were asked
by the European Space Agency to design a habitat on the moon
for about four astronauts who would stay there for a few months.
And the idea was also very much in the brief
to use novel and modern technologies to build the space.
So when you say novel and modern,
what sort of thing are you talking about?
So here is the sequence of how the building sequence works.
We bring from Earth a cylinder,
and out of the cylinder we have this big inflatable
that comes and provide us with a much bigger space.
And so that's what you can kind of see here,
the inflatable is there, yet is very vulnerable,
and that's where you see the little robots come in.
And these robots actually scan the terrain.
They pick up the dust of the moon, which is called regolith... Yes.
..and they use that to gradually 3D print
a protective shell around this very fragile inflatable.
But the idea is that the robots work a bit as a colony of ants
and they drive around and kind of work together
to start covering this structure until it's completely protected.
Why do you need so much protection?
There's virtually no atmosphere on the moon.
So what are you protecting against? Yeah. So the moon has no atmosphere,
so that means that you're very exposed
from all the harshness of space,
so there are very extreme temperature fluctuations,
it can get very, very warm during the day,
very cold during the night.
There is also radiation coming from the sun
that we are protected from here on Earth,
and there is also micro meteorites,
so they are very small but very dangerous and very powerful,
and that's why you need this massive shell,
to basically protect a balloon.
So what would it be like within the structure?
So these cylinders are very similar
to the ones on the International Space Station.
And that's kind of the core of our building,
so that is where all the life support systems are.
That's where all the scientific instruments are, and so on.
What are these structures here? Are they windows? Yes.
What we've learned from the International Space Station
is that this ability to look out, and this connection with Earth,
is actually very important
for the psychological health of the astronauts.
And I think that's something that we explored a lot in this design,
is also understanding that when you send people there to live
for a while, it's very important that they are actually
enjoying their work but also enjoying their lives. Yes.
But when do you think this will come to fruition?
Cos the idea of lunar bases has been around for a while.
Do you think something like this
can come into fruition in the near future?
Again, it really depends on who has the commitment
and the money to do it. Yes.
If a company would say, "We want to spend all the money in the world
"to do this," it could happen almost tomorrow.
So the million dollar question, would you go?
I would definitely go. I would like to come back.
But I would definitely love to go and have a look.
Well, I guess we'll watch this space
and see if it all comes to fruition in the future. Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Building permanent bases like this on the surface of another world
will be the next giant leap forward
in our exploration of the solar system.
It may be many years away, but in the meantime,
we're still learning more about the moon
from the experiments left behind by the Apollo astronauts...
..as Pete has been investigating.
When we look up at the moon
and see the same face always looking back at us,
it is easy to think that it is a static, dead world.
It can be hard to believe that this rock was once alive
with volcanic and geologic activity.
Even more surprisingly,
a paper published by Nature in May
revealed that seismometers left behind on the moon
by the Apollo missions had picked up tremors.
Moon quakes which show that the moon is still geologically active,
even today.
So, tonight, we're going to go looking for the evidence
of that geological activity.
The moon is a big, bright object in the sky.
But to get close in and see some surface detail,
you need a telescope.
Tonight, I want to look for some features which are pretty small,
about a mile or so across.
So I'm employing my 14-inch telescope
and I'm going to use a special camera on the back of it,
which is called a planetary camera -
it's a bit like a super version of a webcam -
that's going to take lots and lots of individual images
which I can process together,
hopefully to give me a nice, sharp image of the lunar surface.
Right. So what I'm trying to do is locate a feature
on the moon's surface called Rupes Recta, or the Straight Wall.
I think some British astronomers actually refer to it as the railway
because it looks like a straight line.
Though it's actually quite difficult to see at the moment
because the phase of the moon is quite full.
But I did manage to get a photograph of it
the other day, when the terminator -
that's the line which divides lunar day and lunar night -
was nearby. When that happens, the angle of the sun
in the lunar sky is quite low, so it casts very dramatic shadows,
and as you can see, the Straight Wall stands out very clearly.
In fact, you can see that it looks exactly
like astronomer Christiaan Huygens described, like a sword,
where you've got the blade,
which is the fault line of the Straight Wall itself
and then the stag horn mountains at the bottom.
So it's a rather attractive feature on the moon's surface,
but in reality this is a fault line,
it's believed to be 300 to 400 metres high
and it's actually quite a gentle slope,
even though it looks like a sheer cliff edge
when you see photographs of it.
The moon quakes detected by the Apollo seismographs
have recently been discovered to emanate
from similar smaller faults on the moon's surface.
These so-called thrust faults
are too small to be seen from the Earth,
but can be seen in this video built from data
from Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
It's thought that the quakes from these faults
would register between two and five on the Richter scale,
strong enough to dislodge boulders that leave tracks
as they roll across the moon's surface.
Geologists believed that the quakes are happening
because the moon is still cooling inside,
and this causes the surface crust to shrink slightly,
giving us cracks in the surface.
Fascinatingly, these quakes happen most frequently around apogee -
that's when the moon is at the furthest point
in its orbit from the Earth.
That's when the tidal stresses due to the Earth's gravity
are at their greatest.
If you want to know more about what you can see on the moon
from here on Earth, you will find my moon guides,
along with this month's star guide on The Sky At Night website.
Happy moon gazing.
So far, we've looked at American and European projects.
But they are by no means the only nations
sending missions to the moon...
..as I discussed with Science Museum curator Doug Millard.
This is it.
This is Apollo 10.
So the Apollo 10 command module? That's right.
This is the actual one.
Charlie Brown, of course, that was its call sign.
Went around the moon 50 years ago
and it was the dress rehearsal mission
for the Apollo 11 landing just two months later.
But that was 50 years ago. Yes.
And now it seems there's a resurgence in a sort of interest
in the moon. What do you think is driving that?
Well, I think Apollo, in a way,
sort of blotted out interest for a long time.
How do you follow Apollo?
Yes. It covered so much. It does.
But we have new generations now, you know,
coming to the subject with renewed interest.
We have new technologies that are a bit cheaper
than they used to be.
Apollo showed the way. We now know how to get to the moon,
how to land on the moon. Doesn't always work.
So there's a greater availability for going to the moon.
During the Cold War, during the space race, it was the
Russians and it was the Americans. Who are the major players now?
Oh, well, they continue to be significant players.
European Space Agency, India, China.
China are, in some ways, replicating what happened during the '60s.
They have a very carefully planned strategic space plan.
In January, the Chang'e 4 mission gave us a best-ever view
of the far side of the moon,
as the Chinese became the first nation to make a soft landing
on the side of the moon that is permanently hidden from the Earth.
The data the lander and its rover has collected
is already transforming our understanding
of the geology of the far side of the moon.
The mission even managed to successfully germinate cotton seeds,
the first indication that it may one day be possible
to grow crops on the moon.
These were major breakthroughs,
and the signs are, there is much more to come.
They are now, this year, looking at a sample return,
which will be a lot harder to do.
It's only been done a few times before.
Cos that's going to the moon, landing on the surface,
scooping up and then coming back... And bringing it back here, yes.
And, so, what are China's plans for the future?
I'm sure within a couple of decades, maybe,
we will see Chinese astronauts on the moon.
So, as well as these countries pushing forward to the moon,
we also had commercial companies looking at the moon as well.
Well, that's right. And just recently we had an Israeli company
which didn't quite make it.
The spacecraft crashed, but it does raise interesting questions
about commercial activity on the moon.
When you say commercial activity,
are there laws governing it at the moment?
Well, there's an Outer Space Treaty, which was first signed in 1967.
There's a Moon Treaty, but it needs revisiting.
It's not quite clear what is possible, what is permissible.
You might have space tourism at some point in the future,
and there are ethical questions
about whether we want to continue doing that
or whether we should treat it as a wilderness,
much as we do the Antarctic.
Well, let's see how it all pans out in the future, but thank you.
And it is lovely to see the module.
The real thing. Thank you. Thank you.
Back in Manchester,
I found scientists who were also preparing to return to the moon,
with missions that will help pave the way for the next human visitors.
Simeon Barber's project is looking to find water on the lunar surface.
What's particularly exciting about getting to the moon?
The moon is an amazing place
and I think we forgot that for a while.
And I think that there was almost a feeling
that we've been to the moon and done that.
So one mission that I'm working on at the moment
with The Open University is supporting the European Space Agency
who are collaborating with Roscosmos in Russia,
and the spacecraft is called Lunar 27,
and it will land near to the South Pole,
where we expect there to be elevated levels of water in the soil,
or just below the surface of the soil.
It's still odd to me that we talk about water on the moon.
I think of... The moon was supposed to be this dry place
and yet there's all this focus on water. That's right.
Partly that's because the samples that were brought back
by the Apollo missions and Soviet lunar missions
were generally from equatorial regions and...
Just like going to the Sahara desert on Earth,
and concluding that it's dry.
Yeah. But the new missions that are being planned now
are actually going to a completely different part of the moon anyway.
They're going to near polar regions.
So we know that these regions are amongst the coldest places
in our solar system. They're minus 200 degrees C or colder.
These are craters that never see the sun
and have not seen the sun for billions of years.
So these temperatures are cold enough that molecules such as water,
if they migrate around the surface of the moon,
when they reach these cold traps, they never leave.
Data taken at the moon's poles
has revealed huge deposits of water ice,
hidden in the deep shadows of the craters.
But we now believe there's also water stored
within the lunar rocks themselves.
And Simeon's project is trying to find out how much of it there is.
So what's this in front of us?
So this is a spare copy of an instrument that we built
to go and analyse samples on the surface of Mars.
And the reason it's here today
is that we're using parts of this instrument
to inspire us in designing a new instrument
to go and study the moon. So what does it do?
This instrument is designed for analysing solid samples
that are maybe drilled from the surface of the planet.
The samples are popped inside this port here, close the lid,
and then we heat those samples up, it releases gases,
and we analyse those gases to work out what they are
and in what quantities they're present in the sample.
So on the moon, what would that help you do?
The moon is kind of a witness that has been a companion to Earth
through time, and it stores information there.
By going there and accessing and studying this water,
we can kind of unravel the history of water
near the Earth through time.
So you go to the moon to find out about the Earth.
And could the water be useful?
Absolutely, yes. So the idea is that if we can find resources
on the surface of the moon - and water is a key resource,
so it's great for servicing human bases... Yes.
Drinking water, sanitation. But, also, water is hydrogen and oxygen.
So if we can separate water into those constituents,
maybe that can be used as a fuel.
It's nice, cos you do the same experiment, you get the science,
but you're also planning for the future of exploration as well.
That's right. Yeah. Well, I hope you get to the moon.
We'll come talk to you when your instruments are on their way.
Please do, yeah. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
The idea of a lunar base like this is not a new one.
Even at the time of the moon landings,
people thought the development was inevitable...
..as Patrick Moore discovered when he met Neil Armstrong in 1970.
Do you think, from your knowledge of the moon, having been there,
that it is going to be possible in the foreseeable future
to set up scientific bases there on anything like a large scale?
Oh, I'm quite certain that we'll have such bases in our lifetime.
Somewhat like the Antarctic stations
and similar scientific outposts continually manned.
Although, certainly, there is the problem of the environment,
the vacuum and the high and low temperatures of day and night.
Still, in all, in many ways,
it's more hospitable than Antarctica might be.
There are no storms, no snow, no high winds,
no unpredictable weather phenomena that we're yet aware of,
and the gravity is a very pleasant kind of place to work in,
better than here on Earth.
And I think it would be quite a pleasant place
to do scientific work and quite practical.
Today, the comparison with the Antarctic still holds true,
as it's thought that any future moon bases
will operate in a similar manner to Antarctic research stations.
Antarctic bases provide facilities and living quarters
for the hundreds of scientific missions that visit the continent.
There are telescopes for studying the constant views
of the polar skies.
But these facilities also act as a base for geologists,
climatologists, biologists and other scientists.
And it's thought that a lunar base would work in the same way.
There is a huge amount of science
that we would want to do on the moon.
The far side of the moon is probably the best place in the solar system
to do radio astronomy.
Shielded from all the radio interference from the Earth,
it should be possible to monitor the low-frequency radio waves
that can't be detected from this planet.
It's information that could tell us
about the first moments after the Big Bang.
There's also lots of life sciences work to be done.
How can we keep astronauts alive and well on the moon's surface
for long periods of time?
But, crucially, there's so much more to discover
about the moon itself.
Because, as Chris discovered when he met Katie Joy,
we are only beginning to scratch the surface of our nearest neighbour.
This is a lunar meteorite rock,
which we don't know exactly where on the moon
it's been launched from.
Chemically, it's similar to some places on the far side.
So this could be a bit of the lunar far side right here? It could be.
We are trying to investigate it and ask those sorts of questions.
We're not quite sure exactly where it came from.
So we've spent the day talking to people excited
about going back to the moon, but what, as a scientist,
do we get if we get to go back? What's left to find out?
The moon is really unusual.
You know, it's incredibly large for a rocky body of its size
compared to the planet it's orbiting around, so that tells us
that it's unique in terms of its formation.
It's geologically diverse, it's complex,
there's different regions, white areas and dark areas
that all formed in different ways.
The front and the back, as well, the far side of the...
Yeah, there's asymmetry between the near side
with lots of lava flows that have been erupted there,
compared with the far side, which is mostly white
and probably formed early in the moon's history.
We know that there are volcanic vent sites that tell us about volcanism.
We know that the moon has been impacted
with asteroids and comets through time.
So it tells us about a lot of different scientific questions
that we either can't access here on the Earth,
or it tells us science questions that we can compare and contrast
to other planetary bodies.
The problem is, is a lot of this knowledge, these ideas,
these models have come out of, you know, the data that we collected
from the Apollo missions.
We have this sample collection, but we only have been to six places,
all within a relatively geographically limited area.
And not only that, we know that the Apollo missions
actually visited quite a weird part of the moon.
So, you know, it's the equivalent of trying to understand
the whole of the geology of Europe
from just visiting, say, France, or just one small country.
You know, it's that big picture perspective
that we're sort of lacking.
So when can we expect some new lunar material?
So, this year. It's really exciting.
We have the next series of the Chinese missions going to the moon.
There's going to be a lander visit the near side of the moon
in a volcanic region in the northern part of the moon
and it's hopefully going to bring back a couple of kilograms of rock
back to the Earth.
And there are plans afoot through collaborations
with several American mission proposals
to go and collect samples robotically as well
from different places. So, the next five years, both robots
and then hopefully human beings will be bringing back samples of the moon
to the Earth, and we can study them in our labs
and do some really new, exciting research.
So what are the advantages of sending people on these missions?
Why not just launch a robotic sample return mission?
So, I think you can do both.
Human beings have the capacity to do more complex science experiments
and to, also, you know, inspire people.
So it's not just about going there and doing science with crew,
it's also about providing that human being contact to another world
and acting as a focal point for how we go out there and how we explore.
And, to me, that's as important as the science that can be achieved.
Well, that I agree with. So I hope we get to see it. So do I.
Thank you very much. Come back
and tell us when you get some more samples.
That's all we've got time for this month.
But join us in July for the second of our lunar specials.
Altitude 4,200. You're go for landing. Over.
We'll be joined by some old friends to look through the BBC Archives,
to see how we covered the build-up to the moon landings 50 years ago.
HE CHUCKLES
We're dealing with an advanced technology of going to the moon
with Stone Age graphics. Love that.
It's fantastic! It's unbelievable!
Also, in the autumn, we'll be hosting a Sky At Night Question Time
where Chris, Peter, myself, as well as some special guests,
will be answering your questions in front of a studio audience.
If you'd like to submit a question, send it through to...
Until then, goodnight.