By the Gazette Editorial Board THE Moon is back again to the centre stage of space exploration. Almost sixty years after Russian spacecraft Luna 2 had landed on the moon and forty years after the first humans, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, had stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecraft's lunar module on the surface of the moon, the Earth's satellite is probably gaining renewed attention from the scientific community and space exploration lovers. The moon, so NASA chief Jim Bridenstine has recently suggested, could serve as a gateway for deeper exploration into space particularly since the International Space Station may retire in a matter of a few years, probably by the year 2024, though there is no officially-set date for that. The suggestion sounds exciting and thought-provoking given that the general impression has been such that the moon is already a subject of past interest. Accentuating this impression has been the notion that with as many as six human landings on the surface of the moon, the job on the satellite's surface may be considered accomplished. And now that following the arrival of Curiosity to Mars, there is some talk of the planning of a human-led mission to the Red Planet nearly a decade and a half from now. If so, the Earth's only permanent natural satellite may be used as a ‘gateway' – the term Bridenstine used. Noting that since the end of the Apollo programme in the year 1972 there has been no going back to the moon, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine indicated in remarks to reporters at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston on August 2 that a return to the moon should have been made almost a decade ago. In 2008, he recalled, an Indian experiment concluded that there was water ice on the moon and an American experiment a year later realised that the moon could potentially have hundreds of billions of tonnes of water ice at its poles – the areas that have been inspected because only the equatorial regions of the moon were the destination of the Apollo programme's all six landings. Preparing for the time when there would be no ISS to conduct space research and advance Earth-space transport technology and systems, rethinking of the moon as a possible platform sounds comprehensible. And the likely availability of ice water at the moon's poles turns the idea even more attractive especially in view of the notion that the outer space could at some point in the future host humans for life outside our increasingly overpopulated planet. With water scientifically proven as the indispensable element of life even for the smallest micro-organisms, the dream of reaching out for rich water resources in the outer space has continued to lure scientists and ordinary people alike. Jupiter's moon Europa is believed to have beneath its surface crust of ice an ocean of liquid water twice as much as the whole Earth. Only through strenuous and meticulous space exploration that such notions may be scientifically proven.
