Wanted: Scientists who shoot for the moon

By Leonard David

updated 1:26 p.m. ET April 11, 2008

GOLDEN, Colo. - NASA's plan to return to the moon — first by robotic missions scheduled to start this year, followed by the replanting of human footprints there by 2020 — will require a new cadre of lunar research and exploration specialists.

That talent largely was dissipated after the Apollo lunar landing program ended in 1972. As a result, several steps need to be taken to recuperate both the scientific and technical expertise that will be needed to investigate and understand the moon.

And scientists are enthusiastic about the prospect. Many of those who attended the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference March 10-14 in League City, Texas, said Earth's closest celestial neighbor is far from being a "been there, done that world" that offers no unknowns worth solving. And several sessions dedicated to lunar science clearly showed a rebound of interest in the moon.

"There will be new lunar scientists developed in India, Japan and China ... that's good. But we need more here in the United States," observed G. Jeffrey Taylor, a planetary scientist at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

There are two groups of existing lunar scientists, Taylor suggested: "Those that have never stopped doing it, even if it's part time, and others that left but are doing other planetary science."

Taylor said the best place to recruit a bevy of new lunar researchers is from other planetary problems, particularly by broadening the interest of those that work on Mars, he said.

Particularly striking were first results from Japan's ongoing Kaguya lunar orbiter mission and the showing of eye-catching high-definition video views of the moon's surface taken by that spacecraft.

Kaguya has joined China's Change'1 in lunar orbit, with India's Chandrayaan-1, carrying U.S.-provided experiments as part of its payload, set to begin circling the moon in a few months.

Many U.S. lunar missions ahead
Given the slate of lunar missions ahead such as NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is scheduled to launch later this year to create high-resolution maps, seek landing sites, as well as search for water ice and other useful resources, NASA sorely needs new lunar experts to analyze new data sets.

Part of that NASA LRO mission is the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS. It will launch with LRO, and then travel independently of the orbiter and crash into the lunar surface to search for water ice.

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NASA has several other lunar robotic spacecraft on the books or in the preliminary planning stages, such as the twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.

NASA also is appealing to other nations to help put in place an International Lunar Network of science nodes. That high-tech network would make use of 21st century technology, with the goal of having the network running five to seven years from now.

Nations are being invited to fly their nodes to the lunar surface, either fixed platforms or mobile hardware. Each node would carry a core set of science instruments, and nations can add experiment packages beyond that core hub of devices.

"That network can offer big science content," Taylor said, "maybe the most important lunar science data set you can get is a global seismic network ... to help understand the moon's composition, which tells us the details of its origin."

"We need a lunar scientist surge," Taylor told SPACE.com. "We have to increase the numbers because we have too much to do for the number of people now engaged," he said.

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