NASA Releases 'Why the Moon?' Video Revealing Plans for a Lunar Base Camp
“We’re going back to the moon and this is why.”
In an inspirational short video, NASA publicly announces its dedication to building a permanent community on the Moon through its Artemis missions, aiming to create a lunar economy and inspire a new generation of pioneers. In the short video above, Narrator Drew Barrymore and NASA trailblazers explain the reasons for this exciting initiative and the new opportunities it will bring.
Space exploration has and continues to lead to technologies and capabilities that shape our way of life. In the video, NASA team members describe the moon as a “treasure trove of science that holds discoveries about our planet and the Sun. “The tens of thousands of jobs associated with propelling us to the Moon today is just the beginning of a lunar economy that will see hundreds of thousands of new jobs developed around the world,” says a NASA administrator. Moon exploration is also a stepping stone for Mars and other worlds, as humans learn to live outside our home planet and create communities on other “cosmic shores” in partial and zero-gravity environments.
The Artemis missions stem from more than 50 years of exploration, and a stable lunar presence is a natural extension of all that we’ve learned in low earth orbit. Concrete goals include the development of an Artemis base camp, the assembly of complex ships in deep space, and the establishment of off-planet self-sustainable and reusable systems, such as a purification mechanism for martian ice into drinkable water and further refining that into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breathe. On this journey, NASA aims to bring in commercial and international partners, establishing a thriving interplanetary supply chain.
“As NASA prepares to launch the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket on the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon, we’ve already begun to take the next step,” reads the video description. In a news release, NASA revealed that they intend to “land the next man, and first woman, on the Moon by 2024,” and “establish sustainable missions by 2028”
Elsewhere, scientists have identified a new class of ocean-covered planets that could soon yield signs of life.
