Universe Today | 26 July 2010
If there’s only one thing we’ve learned from all the highly successful recent Moon missions – the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, LCROSS, Chandrayaan-1 and Kaguya — it’s that the Moon is perplexingly different from our perceptions of the past 40 years. The discovery of water and volatiles across the surface and in the permanently shadowed regions at the poles changes so many of the notions we’ve had about Earth’s constant companion. Basically, just within the past year we’ve realized the Moon is not a dry, barren, boring place, but a wetter, richer and more interesting destination than we ever imagined. And so, the proposal for NASA to effectively turn away from any human missions to the Moon, as well as Administrator Charlie Bolden’s ‘been there, done that’ comments is quite perplexing – especially for the lunar scientists who have been making these discoveries.
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At the Forum (NASA Lunar Science Institute’s annual Lunar Forum at Ames Research Center), lunar scientists shared their most recent findings – as well as their attempts to model and comprehend all the data that is not yet understood. But they saved any discussion of NASA’s future until the final presentation of the meeting.
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“The Moon is not going to get the respect it deserves unless people are out there talking about it,” said Chaikin.
