Humans Are Going Back to the Moon

The European Space Agency just laid out a plan to go back to the moon.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Europe is going to send people to the moon by 2030. 

Yes, yes, we know, the USA already did that like 40 years, and yeah, we know, NASA has already set its sights on sending people to way cooler Mars in the coming decades, but let's let Europe have this one, OK?

They need this right now, plus think of all the new things humans can do up there. Apollo astronauts played golf on the moon, but modern space travelers can tweet on the moon, text that weird moon with a face emoji on the moon, eat Five Guys burgers on the moon—none of that stuff even existed the last time someone was up there in 1972. 

Jokes aside, the European Space Agency released a very cool video detailing its plans for new, manned moon missions. Some of the agency's goals include using the moon's pole, where the sun never sets, as a source of continuous solar power, and exploring the dark side of the moon, which has never been done before.

Other possibilities include using the relative radio silence of the moon to listen for alien signals coming from deep space, and exploring permanently dark craters that contain water to see what it "can teach us about the origins of water and life-forming chemistry on Earth."

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The video goes on to say that unlike the Space Race of the 1960s when the U.S. was competing with the Soviet Union, these new missions will bring nations together. 

"This new exploration will be achieved not in competition, as in the past, but through peaceful, international cooperation," the video says.

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