The biggest “land rush” of the 21st century is underway—but not on Earth.
Together with multiple international partners, the U.S. and China are racing each other to build crewed outposts around the moon’s south pole, a region rich with water ice and other resources that could be used to kick-start an otherworldly economy and strengthen humanity’s expansion deeper into space. NASA’s Artemis IV mission seeks to send astronauts to the lunar south pole in 2028, and China is targeting human landings there by 2030.
But the clamor to capitalize on that prized patch of lunar real estate shouldn’t overlook other areas on the moon that could be even more valuable for science, according to an authoritative new report. Convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a blue-ribbon panel of experts contends that human sorties to nonpolar regions of the moon hold great promise for resolving long-standing mysteries about Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor, the solar system and the universe at large.
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Better yet, the report offers a short list of destinations to prioritize.
The NASA-sponsored report comes from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Key Nonpolar Destinations across the Moon, and it flags four places to send future human missions: Bhabha Crater, Mons Hadley, the Orientale Basin and the Aristarchus Plateau.
“Returning to the moon will be a great achievement for humanity—and setting foot where we never have before will be a major moment for science,” says James Day, co-chair of the committee and a professor at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Visiting these four sites would add immense scientific value to whatever will be learned from any sequence of U.S. and Chinese crewed missions to the lunar south pole, adds committee co-chair Daniel Dumbacher, a professor of engineering practice in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University.
Location, Location, Location
Bhabha Crater, the report notes, is on the lunar farside and would give astronaut expeditions the ability to access material from the moon’s oldest known preserved impact basin and to deploy ultrasensitive radio and optical astronomy experiments shielded from Earth’s noisy emissions.
The Mons Hadley region, part of which was previously explored by Apollo 15 moonwalkers, is a prime location for a space weather observatory. This site, the report says, could also host experiments to assess how piled-up regolith—impact-pulverized rocks that make up the lunar “soil”—could shield against radiation hazards.
The moon’s Orientale Basin is one of the largest and best-preserved multiringed impact crater in the solar system; going there would give unprecedented looks into the deep structure and origin of our natural satellite. Mission crews, the report adds, should return samples from the basin to Earth to reveal exactly how the basin was formed; while they’re there, they could also deploy a gravitational-wave observatory.
Lastly, the moon’s Aristarchus Plateau is a geologically rich volcanic landscape. Collecting samples there would help researchers understand volcanic processes that have shaped the moon and identify potentially important resources that could support future exploration.
The NAS panel also notes that the moon’s accessibility and sterility make it “an excellent testbed” for refining “planetary protection” procedures—that is, for finding ways to avoid Earth life contaminating other potentially habitable places in the solar system (and ensuring any alien biology doesn’t catastrophically contaminate Earth). Crewed dry runs at lunar test beds could help establish the rules of the road before sending humans to more biologically sensitive environments.
“Practicing planetary protection protocols on the moon will lead to greater confidence in the successful execution of these on other planetary bodies, such as Mars, where life may exist or may once have existed and the stakes are significantly higher,” the report states.
Adding a whole swath of extra proposed crewed lunar landing sites in addition to already planned human forays to the moon’s south pole may seem like overkill, says committee member Clive Neal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. But the exercise is meant “to be enabling for Artemis and not a distraction.”
“There are four examples given for different missions, but it comes back and feeds into [NASA’s] developing moon base,” he says. One overlooked concept that the report seeks to highlight, Neal adds, is “the idea of a ‘distributed’ moon base”—a network of interlinked sites that can be more than the sum of their parts, providing far more value overall than any solitary outpost.
That’s because the moon probably has much more to offer than just the resources at its shadowy south pole—and figuring out the specifics is a long-term project with far-reaching implications. “There’s both science that enables exploration as well as exploration-driven science that enables a long-term human presence on the moon,” Neal says. “Achieving a permanent human presence on the moon is akin to now having a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit,” he adds, and the lessons learned will feed forward for future crewed voyages to Mars.
A “History Book” for the Entire Universe
Jack Burns, a professor emeritus of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder, is delighted by the report’s recommendations. He briefed the specially convened panel regarding a proposed array of low-frequency radio telescopes on the lunar farside.
Called FarView, this facility makes use of the moon’s radio-quiet environment to open the last unexplored electromagnetic window for astrophysics, delivering breakthrough science across astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, heliophysics and planetary science, he tells Scientific American.
“Astronauts could play a crucial role in the early stages of that array, helping in site surveys, as well as setting up power stations and communications and the basic electronics to get started,” Burns says. The primary science driver for FarView, he adds, is the exploration of the cosmic dark ages, a mysterious era shortly after the big bang and before the formation of the first stars.
As for astronauts conducting such duties versus robots, “the modern way of looking at it is not either; it’s both,” Burns observes.
The NAS report underscores the need to explore the whole moon, not just its south pole, he adds. “The moon is our history book. With Apollo, we just thumbed through the first few pages. But there’s much more to delve into, as the moon is a unique learning tool, not only to understand that body but also to help unwrap the history of our Earth.”
Erica Jawin, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, who was not part of the NAS panel, agrees. Answering questions such as why the moon’s nearside looks so different from its farside, when the giant lunar impact basins formed, and how much water and other “volatile” materials may lurk in the lunar interior would help reveal otherwise-hidden chapters of our planet’s and our solar system’s deepest history.
“These questions, among many others, can be addressed by exploring nonpolar locations,” Jawin says. “The scientific community has repeatedly discussed locations of high scientific value for surface exploration.” The Aristarchus Plateau has been of particular interest.
“The Aristarchus Plateau has been consistently recognized for its scientific value in the form of diverse volcanism and the young, bright Aristarchus Crater, as well as its exploration potential for everything from resource prospecting for water to manufacturing building materials using the thick pyroclastic deposit,” Jawin says.
A robust and successful lunar exploration program, Jawin continues, should leverage the unique role humans can play in conjunction with robotic assets. In particular, it is critical to understand specific locations where scientific exploration would benefit from having a human-crewed component, she said.
“Humans have unique skills for exploration and observation that differ from robotic surface or orbital assets. Particularly, humans excel in visual analyses such as assessing geologic setting and diversity across a landing site, as well as in complex decision-making and confronting unexpected obstacles,” Jawin notes.
With proper investment into scientific and technological capabilities, Jawin concludes, “the coming years could be a renaissance for human exploration of the moon, allowing us to answer scientific questions that have persisted for decades.”