Why America Wants to Send Astronauts to the Moon's South Pole
From WIRED: In December 2017, roughly a year into his tenure as president, Donald Trump directed NASA to develop a plan to return American astronauts to the moon. Since then, the government has released few details about what this mission would look like. But Tuesday, at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence doled out a big piece of information: When American astronauts go back to the moon, they will land at the lunar south pole. Why there? Because there鈥檚 ice at the moon鈥檚 poles, which Pence claimed could be turned into rocket fuel.
鈥淚n this century, we鈥檙e going back to the moon with new ambitions,鈥 Pence said. 鈥淣ot just to travel there, but also to mine oxygen from lunar rocks that will refuel our ships, to use nuclear power to extract water from the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole, and to fly on a new generation of spacecraft that will enable us to reach Mars in months, not years.鈥
Up until a decade ago, planetary scientists were fairly certain no water existed on the moon because it has no substantial atmosphere. Over the past 10 years, however, analysis of data collected by the Indian Space Research Organization鈥檚 Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter 鈥渄efinitively鈥 proved ice exists on the moon. Most of the ice the Chandrayaan-1 detected is located in craters at the south pole, which is permanently shadowed due to the moon鈥檚 slight axial tilt. Temperatures never rise above 鈥250 degrees Fahrenheit in these craters, preventing the ice from evaporating into space.