2012: Year of the Moon?

NASA saw in the New Year with a successful mission to the moon. Over the weekend the agency’s two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) probes completed their three-month journey and began gathering data.

The aim of the mission is to map the Moon’s uneven gravitational field in an effort to understand how it, and other rocky planets including Earth, might have formed.

The probes will fly in tandem, reporting back the distances between them. When they travel over areas of lesser gravity, like mountains or masses in the Moon’s core, the distance between them will fluctuate. Scientists will interpret these changes and use the data to produce a map.

Although NASA deny this was a commercially motivated mission, some, including Professor John Zarnecki from the Open University, believe the information gathered could be used to develop plans for mining on the Moon.

Speaking yesterday on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Professor Zarnecki said that the map could identify the location of important rare earth metals on the Moon, but it would still be a long time before mining them would become economically viable.

On the other side of the world China have revealed plans to launch its first manned mission to the surface of the Moon. A landing is not expected until at least 2020, but the Chinese government is hoping to see its first space station up and running by 2016.

So, after spending 2011 looking for planets beyond our solar system, it seems space scientists are at least starting 2012 with projects a little closer to home.