Lunar Living: The Sunday Times Bestseller

Product Information

Crew will return to the lunar surface for the first time this century beginning with the Artemis III mission. From lunar orbit, two astronauts will take the first new ride to the surface of the Moon, landing where no humans have ever been: the lunar South Pole. This is the ideal location for a future base camp given its potential access to ice and other mineral resources.

The lander, which for 2024 hasn't been built, perhaps sums up better than any element the anxiety felt around the accelerated timeline. There’s no hardware to speak of yet, and it remains unclear how it will be tested before 2024. We already have a good understanding of the changes that occur to the human body in space. “I like to say that we literally become extra-terrestrials,” says Barratt, who is also a medical doctor. “Your anatomy changes, your physiology changes, your biochemistry changes. And we still function right along, it really is quite remarkable.” Power will be an issue in permanently shadowed craters. One way to get it in is by concentrating sunlight using mirrors mounted on a crater rim. “You take one of those mirrors and actively point it down at your rover,” says John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic. Do you have days when you feel exhausted, close to burn out and like you want to hide away from the world? Harvesting lunar resources could lead to safer, more efficient operations with less dependence on supplies delivered from Earth. NASA plans to send the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover ( VIPER) to the lunar South Pole before crew. Arriving via a commercial Moon delivery, mobile robot will get a close-up view of the distribution and concentration of ice that could eventually be harvested to support human exploration farther into the solar system. We will learn how to spend more time on the lunar surface as well as prepare to future trips to Mars by conducting life science research and learning to mitigate hazards associated with space exploration. What to knowThe Lunar Lantern outpost consists of habitats, sheds, landing pads, blast walls, and roadways. Landing pads, thought to be one of the first lunar structures, will need to contain and control the supersonic and subsonic dust ejecta created during launch and landing. SEArch+'s design offers multiple strategies for dust mitigation and dust collection in printability, form, and function."

Since 2016, NASA has worked with several companies on their habitation systems and designs, assessing internal layouts, environmental control and life support systems, and outer structure options, including rigid shells, expandable designs, and hybrid concepts. The agency is currently working with industry to refine ideas for a combination home and office in orbit, recently testing full-size prototypes. What to wear Shannon started to focus on ideas that were viable. “What made a lot of sense was the ability to build a very small crew-tended space station around the Moon,” he says. “Gateway gives you a place for crews to get set up before they go down to the surface. It gives you an opportunity to control remote vehicles on the surface.” It would also act as a safe haven were anything to go wrong during a mission. NASA is in the early idea stage for a pressurized rover – formulating concepts and evaluating potential science and exploration rover missions around the South Pole. What to do Have you ever woken up one morning feeling overly emotional or questioning certain areas of your life? Are there days when you feel like your intuition is so strong, it seems like you have all the answers, and everything falls into place almost effortlessly? Or how about the nights you lie awake staring at the ceiling or sudden cravings for solitude and alone time?As the moon waxes and grows bigger and brighter in the sky every night, use the growing energy and light of the moon to do all you can to bring your new moon dreams and intentions to life. As the moon’s energy grows, so will yours, encouraging you to take action, go out into the world, be seen and heard and take brave bold steps towards achieving your dreams. Before water can be extracted, there will be some prospecting to do. Once promising deposits have been identified, robots could be used to dig them up. To protect these habitats against micrometeoroid strikes and radiation, robots could 3D-print hard outer shells that could sit over the habitats. Lunar “soil”, or regolith, could even be used as the building material. “It’s an easy construction method, and can be done rapidly,” says Philip Metzger. Even with minimal surface support in place on early missions, astronauts will embark on at least a week-long expedition on the Moon. Crew will work by day in their modern spacesuits – using new tools to collect samples and setting up a variety of experiments. We had a person on Orion who was near retirement,” says Peterson. “He was expressing that he might push out his retirement so he could experience it on the shop floor.”