Lunar Living: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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This means there aren’t huge changes in temperature, therefore allowing solar panels to soak up plenty of sunlight with which to power a potential lunar colony. Other space agencies around the world, including NASA and the Russian agency, Roscosmos, have been making similar noises too. In the future, NASA envisions a fixed habitat at the Artemis Base Camp that can house up to four astronauts for a month-long stay.

The European Space Agency, along with UK architects Foster + Partners, have come up with a hybrid design. This also means that they don't have to refer to a manual that might run to thousands of pages, enabling them to work quicker and more efficiently.We’ve already demonstrated that 3D printing can be a very efficient tool and that it is possible to process lunar regolith [loose material],” says Laurent Pambaguian, Materials Technology Engineer at ESA. It would certainly be a good place to install telescopes, but the downside is that you’d need a system of relay satellites to maintain contact with Earth – a key psychological factor as it’s important not to feel too cut off. That means you have to stage further away from the Moon, so you can make your decision there as to: ‘Do I want to go to the poles or do I want to go to the equator?

The Russians are currently looking into the feasibility of a base at Malapert Mountain in this region. This is the end of the waning moon when the moon is barely visible in the sky but hasn’t yet become new. Zero gravity is totally devastating to the human body in terms of muscle wastage and the demineralisation of the skeleton,” says Dartnell.The Moon is a very different place to the Earth, taking nearly a month to complete one rotation on its axis. This year's June Solstice (Summer in the Northern Hemisphere/Winter in the Southern) carries a bit of a punch with it as the Sun was moving from Gemini into Cancer, it was forming an inconjunct (quincunx) aspect to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn on the anaretic degree. It remains to be seen how the regolith would be collected in sufficient quantities and delivered to the printer, and Pambaguian warns of the need for an initial robotic mission to ensure the system works in the Moon’s reduced gravitational field. An important part of these efforts involves building habitats that can ensure the astronauts' health, safety, and comfort in the extreme lunar environment.