The Scientific Research Schedule for NASA's Return to the Moon. (September 20, 2006)

    ScienceNow reports on the recommendations the National Research Council (NRC) of the US National Academies makes as to what science NASA should do as it returns humans to the moon.

Credit: NASA and ScienceNow

In essence "it's the same science that the scientific community has been pushing for years--an ambitious effort to understand the origins and evolution of rocky bodies like the moon, and Earth."

According to the report NASA's first priority should be new funding for lunar science data analysis. Large data aquision will derive from such initiatives as the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission and missions to precede LRO by India, China, and Japan. Next exploration of the South Pole-Aitken basin, a huge impact scar mostly on the back side of the moon, "then comes a global instrument network for probing the interior, followed by rock sample returns, the scientifically-informed selection of human landing sites, and analysis of any icy polar deposits. The search for water ice in the deep-chill of permanent shadows--a possible source of rocket fuel for trips back home or on to Mars--is a prime focus of LRO."

And what may be seen as a serve to US President George W Bush's directive for maned exploration, "The science hasn't changed," says committee member Carlé Pieters of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The objectives remain the same as when robots were going to do all the exploration but lost out to human exploration. Now NASA has to consider just how much more science can piggyback on the return to the moon than it managed in the days of Apollo."