Related papers: Concentrated Lunar Resources: Imminent Implication…
There is growing interest in the possibility that the resource base of the Solar System might in future be used to supplement the economic resources of our own planet. As the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, the Moon is sure to feature…
The lunar surface is a compelling location for large, distributed optical facilities, with significant advantages over orbital facilities for high spatial resolution astrophysics. The serious development of mission concepts is timely…
The Outer Space Treaty makes it clear that the Moon is the province of all mankind, with the latter ordinarily understood to exclude state or private appropriation of any portion of its surface. However, there are indeterminacies in the…
The lunar poles are unique environments of both great scientific and, increasingly, commercial interest. Consequently, a tension exists between the twin objectives of (a) Exploring the lunar poles for both scientific and commercial purposes…
The intense activity of cratering on the Moon and in the inner regions of the solar system was accomplished during the first 10^9 years [1]. Occasionally, some impact events occur even nowadays. In Section 1, we treat, from a historical…
Motivated by efforts to return humanity to the Moon, three cases are reviewed for X-ray astronomy from the lunar surface: (1) Facilitation of ambitious engineering designs including high throughput telescopes, long focal length optics and…
The Earth--Moon system has been experiencing impacts from asteroids and comets for billions of years. The Moon, as an airless body, has preserved a distinct record of these events in form of impact craters and ejecta deposits, offering…
The lunar surface has historically been considered an optimal site for a broad range of astronomical telescopes. That assumption, which has come to be somewhat reflexive, is critically examined in this paper and found to be poorly…
Carbon is one of the most essential elements to support a sustained human presence in space, and more immediately, several large-scale methalox-based transport systems will begin operating in the near future. This raises the question of…
Current thinking about the Moon as a destination has revitalized interest in lunar astronomical observatories. Once seen by a large scientific community as a highly enabling site, the dramatic improvement in capabilities for free-space…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
A radio telescope placed in lunar orbit, or on the surface of the Moon's farside, could be of great value to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The advantage of such a telescope is that it would be shielded by the body of…
It is known that most of the craters on the surface of the Moon were created by the collision of minor bodies of the Solar System. Main Belt Asteroids, which can approach the terrestrial planets as a consequence of different types of…
An efficient characterization of scientifically significant locations is essential prior to the return of humans to the Moon. The highest resolution imagery acquired from orbit of south-polar shadowed regions and other relevant locations…
Water ice is thought to be trapped in large permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) in the Moon's polar regions, due to their extremely low temperatures. Here, we show that many unmapped cold traps exist on small spatial scales, substantially…
The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…
Future Moon bases will likely be constructed using resources mined from the surface of the Moon. The difficulty of maintaining a human workforce on the Moon and communications lag with Earth means that mining will need to be conducted using…
The lunar surface allows a unique way forward in cosmology, to go beyond current limits. The far side provides an unexcelled radio-quiet environment for probing the dark ages via 21 cm interferometry to seek elusive clues on the nature of…
Based on technical work and development conducted under the LunA-10 study, I have identified six hypotheses where, if revolutionary improvements in technology can be made, I assess that a direct acceleration to the fielding of a lunar…
Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) observed on the surface of the moon, are of high rarity, low repetition rate and very short observation times, resulting in that there is little information about this topic. This necessitates the importance…