Why the Lunar South Pole Is Our Next Important Step
The lunar south pole is a treasure trove of science, rife with resources, and our springboard to the solar system.
Humans walked on the moon for the last time in December 1972. NASA’s Apollo missions of the 60s and 70s sparked our imaginations. It wouldn’t be long before we built a moon base. Lunar tourism was right around the corner. Some of us might even be living there. We were on the verge of becoming a true spacefaring civilization. But in the 50 or so years since Apollo 17, these ideas slowly receded into science fiction.
Jim Bridenstine explained the reasons for not continuing lunar exploration and colonization were economic and political. Bridenstine ran NASA under the Trump administration. It wasn’t the lack of technology or scientific understanding. We wanted to colonize the Moon, and we could’ve done it. It’s just that politicians didn’t want to take such risks.
“If it wasn’t for the political risk, we would be on the moon right now. In fact, we would probably be on Mars.”
Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Business Insider
Thankfully, though, humanity’s lunar appetite has returned, and we’re drooling over the lunar south pole.
Racing to the Lunar South Pole
India
On August 23rd, 2023 India’s Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed humanity’s first probe on the lunar south pole. “I reached my destination and you too!,” the little Pragyan rover broadcasted before embarking on its 2-week mission. Its goals were to confirm the presence of water ice, analyze the topsoil and atmosphere, and map the surrounding area. After traversing 100 meters, the Indian Space Research Organisation revealed several accomplishments. It had detected a minor moonquake. It also detected the presence of sulfur and significant variations in subsurface temperatures. And it analyzed the thin layer of ions and electrons circling above the pole.
Two previous missions detected water signals from orbit across large regions of the lunar poles.
Russia
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, had similar ambitions. In August 2023, they sent the Luna-25 lander to the lunar south pole on a year-long mission. Its first goal was to study the composition of the lunar regolith. Its second was to “study the plasma and dust components of the lunar polar exosphere,” according to NASA. Despite being decades in the making, Roscomos lost contact with Luna-25 during the descent and crash-landed, ending the mission. The lunar south pole is notoriously difficult to land on because of its many large craters and light variability. This was their first mission to the lunar surface since the 70s.
Japan
Japan’s Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) program is scheduled to launch in 2025. They are working with India’s space program and NASA. LUPEX plans to land a several hundred-pound rover on the lunar south pole. Engineers equipped it with drilling and sampling instruments to study the water content of the regolith. The project is still in the planning phases. Engineers are optimistic the mission will be successful and lead to a sustainable moon colony in the near future.
“The LUPEX project will investigate the quantity and quality of water on the moon. We hope to use this data as a basis for considering sustainable human activities on the moon in the future.”
Natsu Fujioka, JAXA statement
China
The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is an ongoing mission to explore the lunar surface. They named it the Chang’e Project in honor of the Moon goddess Chang’e. The end goal is to establish a robotic research station. Chang’e missions 1-5 already accomplished several feets. They put a satellite in lunar orbit. They also landed rovers in various locations. And they collected, analyzed, and returned some 1731 grams of lunar soil to Earth. Beginning in 2024, missions 6-8 aim to land a rover and flying probe on the lunar south pole. Like other nations, the goals are to search for water, important elements and minerals, and ideal moon base locations. Chang’e 8 will also test the construction methods for actually building the base possibly as soon as 2027.
The European Union
The European Space Agency is developing the Argonaut. They designed it to be highly adaptable to fulfill various functions. The original idea was outlined in 2015. It’s been approved at the ministerial level and is slated to launch in 2030. Its main goal is to help create and support a permanent lunar installation however it can. It can be configured for “cargo delivery, returning samples from the moon or prospecting resources found on the moon.”
The United States
“Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon and establish a sustainable and permanent human presence on the lunar surface.”
NASA, 2022
The US is on its way to reestablishing a human presence on the Moon for the first time since 1972. A collaboration of 29 countries, NASA’s Artemis mission formally began under the Trump administration in 2017. It consists of 4 stages until 2029.
- Artemis I launched in November 2022 and successfully completed two lunar flybys. The purpose was to test the new Space Launch System, a heavy-lift and expendable rocket, and the Orion spacecraft, a reusable, 4-person capsule capable of supporting the crew for 21 days beyond low Earth orbit.
- Artemis II is scheduled for November 2024. 4 astronauts in the Orion spacecraft are intended to perform a lunar flyby and return to Earth.
- Artemis III is supposed to launch in December 2025, and its purpose is to put humans on the lunar south pole via the Starship Human Landing System, the lander that will transport astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The Orion spacecraft will carry 4 astronauts, with 2 descending to the surface to perform 4 spacewalks and a variety of science experiments before returning to Earth.
- Artemis IV is slated for September 2028. NASA expects this to be the second attempt at putting humans on the lunar south pole. This time, the purpose is to explore the terrain and begin to lay the foundation of a colony on the lunar south pole.
“A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step.”
Astronaut Chris Hadfield, Science Alert
A Treasure Trove of Science
Seismology
Instruments from the Apollo missions detected seismic activity. This alerted us to the fact that the Moon is not as quiet as we thought. NASA wants to install new seismometers since they switched off the original ones in 1977. Discovering the source of these moonquakes will help us understand the Moon’s composition and creation. It’ll also help us understand the evolution of the Sun and the formation of the solar system including Earth. And the lunar south pole has already proven itself to be a good place to start exploring lunar seismology. India’s Pragyan rover recently detected the first moonquake in nearly 50 years.
Low Gravity
The Moon also has 1/6th the gravity of Earth. So the lunar surface is ideal for certain experiments. We can use these conditions to test plasma interactions, matter compression, fluid dynamics, and combustion and fire properties. Scientists already understand that all of these behave differently with less gravity. But they need to conduct much more testing. Future testing could lead to new physical models.
No Atmosphere
The Moon has almost no atmosphere. This allows detectors to make more accurate readings of the solar wind and solar flares. Apollo astronauts left behind a solar wind detector, and it has provided a wealth of valuable data. Future lunar missions will include far bigger and better solar wind detectors.
No atmosphere also means no ionosphere. On Earth, the ionosphere interferes with low-frequency radio waves, making radio astronomy difficult. Some scientists see the lunar surface’s potential for creating radio observatories. China’s Chang’e 4 had a radio spectrometer, and NASA is planning to deploy the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment. Its purpose will be to study the universe’s Dark Ages, shortly after the Big Bang when stars hadn’t yet formed.
China also wants to use a moon base as the basis of a telescopic array. Telescopic arrays are a collection of ground-based or orbital telescopes. They work together over time to produce the same image as a telescope of their collective scope. The most common example of this is the Very Large Array in Nevada. “An array is a group of several radio antennas observing together creating — in effect — a single telescope many miles across.”
Distance From Earth
The Moon is 384,400 km away from Earth. Having research stations this far apart will allow scientists to test both quantum mechanics and General Relativity. For example, scientists have already demonstrated quantum entanglement across nearly 250 km. But a lunar research station could extend this distance by several orders of magnitude. A lunar research station would also allow scientists to measure perturbations in the Earth-Moon distance with submillimeter precision. They could use these measurements to test the predictions of General Relativity and its alternatives, such as Modified Newtonian Dynamics. The Apollo 11 astronauts installed the laser-ranging retroreflector. The purpose was to reflect laser-ranging beams from Earth, allowing for precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance. NASA is planning to upgrade this device by deploying the Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector to the lunar surface.
The distance between the Earth and the Moon also gives lunar scientists a unique vantage point to observe the Earth. We already do this with satellites in low Earth orbit and those much further away in Lagrange point 1. But lunar observatories would be far enough away to see large-scale phenomena and close enough to make high-resolution observations. Scientists are confident lunar observatories would provide valuable insights into atmospheric chemistry, weather patterns, lightning, oceanography, etc.
Rife With Resources
Elements
We already know that this mysterious landscape contains hydrogen, oxygen, silicon, iron, magnesium, calcium, aluminum, manganese, and titanium. It also has near-constant illumination in certain areas and water ice at the bottom of craters. Astronauts could feasibly build a moon base on a crater rim, giving it access to ample solar energy and water. Also, 45% of the lunar regolith is oxygen by weight. NASA already has a plan to extract it with solar-powered lasers. If this works, a lunar colony would have an endless supply of oxygen.
“This technology has the potential to produce several times its own weight in oxygen per year on the lunar surface, which will enable a sustained human presence and lunar economy.”
Aaron Paz, NASA senior engineer
H3
The Moon is rife with Helium-3 (H3), a rare isotope of helium, compared to Earth. Because Earth has a powerful magnetic field, H3 from the solar wind does not reach the surface in large quantities. The Moon’s, however, is virtually non-existent, meaning H3 has been bombarding its surface for billions of years. Nuclear fusion reactors can use H3, providing a powerful energy source, while producing literally zero radioactive waste products. H3 is also important in “neutron detection, dilution refrigerators, ultra low-temperature physics research.”
Some scientists want to mine H3 on the Moon and ship it back to Earth. It’s hard to say how much lunar H3 would be worth. Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, believes it might be worth $4 billion per ton. If this is correct, it’ll be the most valuable minable resource in space. China’s Chang’e 5 mission returned a mineral called Changesite-(Y) from the lunar south pole in 2020. They claim it contains H3.
Building Materials
The other elements in the lunar regolith and the regolith itself will prove useful as building materials. The ESA created a method of melting the regolith and creating durable bricks. They used nearly 150 curved mirrors to focus sunlight into a concentrated beam to liquefy the regolith. They then fed it into a specialized 3D printer that forms .1 mm bricks. These have the strength of gypsum. So a future lunar colony will be able to produce its own high-strength, durable building materials.
“For a mission like building a base on the Moon surface, in-situ resource utilisation will certainly be one of the most important enabling technologies. This result offers the opportunity of a complete sustainable approach.”
Tommaso Ghidini, ESA’s Materials and Processes
Springboard to the Solar System
With a functioning and well-stocked moon base, future space missions will be substantially easier and less expensive. Right now, it costs around $15,000 to put 1 kg into Earth’s orbit. Though this price is coming down steadily, launching from the Moon can lower this cost significantly. Not only does the Moon have 1/6th the gravity but future missions can stock their supplies on the lunar surface. This is far cheaper than incurring the cost of launching them from Earth. It’ll essentially be a gas station to stock up on H3, water, and oxygen on our journey elsewhere. Therefore, we’ll be able to explore the solar system and maybe the galaxy at a fraction of the cost. With a moon base, exploring and colonizing Mars becomes feasible.
The Fermi Paradox, Aliens, and the Future
We’ve come a long way as a species, but our survival chances are only slightly better than ever before. We’ve been on the brink of extinction several times.
Brink of Extinction
1.2 million years ago, homo erectus, our distant relatives from whom we evolved, experienced a severe population drop. This was possibly due to the rapid onset of an ice age. The population plummeted to 26,000, numbers low enough to earn them a spot on the critically endangered species list.
The situation became even worse roughly 300,000 years later. Our ancestors were down to only 1,300 individuals in the Middle Pleistocene. This created a genetic bottleneck that lasted for well over 100,000 years. Again, this is likely due to a shift in the climate.
“For a population of that size, you just need one bad climate event, an epidemic, a volcanic eruption and you’re gone.”
Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London
Even worse,150,000 years ago, homo sapiens petered out to only 600 breeding individuals. The temperature was again dropping, and our fledgling species began to fracture and spread across Africa. Possibly the only groups to survive had found solace along the coast of South Africa.
In the following millennia, humanity bounced back. But 70,000 years ago the Toba super-eruption drastically reduced our numbers to only a few thousand. The explosion was roughly 5,000 times more powerful than the Mt. Saint Helens eruption. It spewed out 2,800 cubic km of ash that plunged the Earth into a severe ice age. It brought humanity again to the brink of existence.
The Great Filter
We’re lucky to be here, but we shouldn’t rest easy. There might be any number of Great Filters ahead of us. In 1950, Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” Given what we know about the universe, it’s likely that humanity would’ve detected alien civilizations. The probability of life elsewhere is high enough that the sky should be busy with signals of intelligent life. But it’s not. This is the Fermi Paradox. Attempts to answer it range from terrifying to comical. Somewhere in between is the idea of Great Filters.
As life advances, on Earth or elsewhere, it needs to overcome certain hurdles. If a species can’t pass these hurdles, it won’t reach a level of intelligence capable of broadcasting its existence. It may not even survive. One of these hurdles might be evolving from simple prokaryotic cells to more complex eukaryotic cells. Another might be evolving into multicellular organisms. It might be developing the ability to use tools. Or being able to adapt to rapidly shifting climates. Or any number of other obstacles that prevent it from advancing. It could be that the universe contains an abundance of life, but these hurdles held them back. So they died or didn’t reach a level of intelligence that we can detect. Scientists refer to these hurdles as Great Filters.
Or maybe advanced civilizations are common as well, but they just don’t last that long. Perhaps the Great Filter is that advanced civilizations destroy themselves with their own weapons. Maybe they mismanaged resources or didn’t spread out before a cataclysmic event. Though we live in a relatively calm part of the universe, it can be violent and chaotic. Fast radio bursts, supernovae, planet-destroying asteroids, rogue black holes, etc. can spell doom. So some civilizations may not have time to save themselves.
The Future
So we should’ve built a moon colony back in the 70s when we could’ve. We need to advance and spread out as quickly as possible. We don’t know how much time we have, and frankly, it’s arrogant to assume we’ll survive just because we’re special. Thankfully, we are on track to do this. A moon colony on the lunar south pole is only a few years away. It will no longer be a piece of science fiction. In fact, it might be a small step towards saving our fragile species.
