Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, August 29 (Beijing time)-at 8:33 EDT on August 29 (20:33 Beijing time on August 29), NASA will carry out the Artemis-1 mission and test-launch the Space launch system (SLS) carrier rocket, starting the first step back to the moon.

"We're going," is the slogan used by NASA as he prepares for the maiden flight of his new moon landing rocket. The phrase was repeatedly mentioned by NASA officials and became a hashtag for social media posts, written on banners hanging around the launch site of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

But the United States landed on the moon 50 years ago, so why go now? Especially considering that American astronauts won't actually land on the moon for a few years. By then, the cost of NASA could reach about $100 billion.

NASA officials, a springboard to explore Mars, argue that lunar missions are at the heart of its manned space program, not only a replica of the Apollo moon landing from 1969 to 1972, but also future landings on distant planets such as Mars.

"in the future, NASA will land the first woman and the first man of color on the moon," NASA director Bill Nelson said at a news conference this month. "in these increasingly complex missions, astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology that will send the first humans to Mars."

▲ scientists think the moon is the best place to study the solar system.

This position is already different from the attitude of the US government in 2010. At the time, the then US president gave a speech at the launch site of the US mission to the moon, saying that NASA should aim at more ambitious destinations such as asteroids and Mars, and look beyond the moon. "We have been to the moon before."

On the one hand, NASA wants to use the moon mission as a testing ground to verify the technology needed for a much longer mission to Mars; on the other hand, NASA hopes to use the mission to stimulate companies that want to build a stable business, send scientific instruments and other payloads to the moon, and inspire students to enter the fields of science and engineering. "We explore because it's part of our nature." Nelson said in an interview.

Competition among great powers now, the United States is not the only one who wants to go to the moon.

In recent years, China has successfully completed three robot missions to the moon. A non-profit organization in India and Israel also launched landers in 2019, although both crashed. South Korea's first lunar orbital probe is on its way to the moon.

Nelson, director of NASA, said China's expanding space ambitions, including the establishment of a lunar base in the 1930s, also provided impetus for the Artemis project.

The best place to study the solar system for scientists, NASA's renewed focus on the moon bodes well for a flood of new data in the coming years.

During the Apollo mission to the moon, the rocks collected by astronauts upended planetary scientists' understanding of the solar system. Radioisotope analysis provides accurate dating of various regions of the lunar surface. The rocks also reveal the amazing origin story of the moon: the moon seems to have been formed by debris that burst into space when a Mars-sized object hit Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

Although NASA's attention has shifted to areas beyond the moon over the years, the scientific interest aroused by the moon has never completely disappeared. In fact, its desolate nature means that the rock that hardened billions of years ago remains almost pristine.

▲ Rocks from the Moon Valley Crater

"as scientists, we know that the moon is in a sense a Rosetta stone (a reliable clue to the study of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics)," said David A. Kring of the Moon and Planet Institute, a research institute in Houston. "it is the best place in the solar system to study the origin and evolution of the planets in the solar system."

Moreover, scientists have found that the moon is not as dry as they thought. Frozen water is a valuable resource at the bottom of forever dark craters in the polar regions of the moon. It can provide drinking water for future astronauts who visit the moon, and the water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen.

The constant knowledge of ice has rekindled people's interest in the moon. In the early 2000s, Anthony Colaprete, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, said his thoughts on the moon were "scratching the surface". "one of our main goals is to understand the origin and form of water on the moon." Dr. Colapret said.

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