The Police released their hit single Walking on the Moon thirty years ago. The immortal lyrics contained in my blog title are from that song. They imagined a time when astronauts would saunter around the Moon again.

The 1979 song was also timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the first lunar landings. On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Jim Collins were the first humans to land on the Moon. This past year marked the 40th anniversary of that historic occassion. The last lunar mission was concluded in 1972 and due to budget cuts by successive American governments, our only natural satellite has remained unvisited since then.

Hope has sprung again, though, that a new lunar mission is possible. Not only that but that the permanent settlement of the Moon might begin within the lifetimes of most of us.

That possibility has arisen due to the discovery of frozen water on the Moon.  On October 9th, the American space agency NASA, as part of its LCROSS mission, crashed two remote controlled satellites into the Moon with the aim of creating an explosion. The main objective behind it was to throw up debris which has now been analysed by scientists back on Earth. And the result of this groundbreaking experiment is that we now have evidence that the Moon may contain water molecules. Although final confirmation of this is yet to be made, this looks very likely to be the case given the preliminary findings.

What will this mean? In the short term, it will enable future manned missions to the lunar surface to draw upon water supplies for drinking and hygiene purposes. Longer term it will enable the human colonisation of the Moon to procede due to the presence of water which will be used for not only basic purposes but the oxygenation of living spaces as well.

Another aspect that has been overlooked is that it may provide further evidence of both the Moon and the Earth's common origins. In recent decades, scientists have seized upon a theory that a meteorite collision during the early stages of the Earth's formation created a large amount of debris. According to the theory, this debris became clumped together and, thus, the Moon was born. While other theories have been posited about the Moon's formation, the discovery of water will add further weight to the collision formation theory given that H20 can now be found on the surfaces of both bodies.

Irrespective of what the future might hold, the discovery of water on the Moon signifies the biggest scientific find yet made on our natural satellite. Therefore, it is a question of when, not if, humans will be walking on the Moon again before this century is out.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Google
• Technorati

Do you like this post?

+5

87 votes