NASA Announces Plans to Colonize the Moon By 2030
NASA has committed to putting humans on the moon by 2024 and human settlements by 2030, but what will it take to achieve this lofty goal?
Under NASA’s Artemis program the space agency announced the priority of going back to the moon with settlements on the lunar surface by 2030 that would act as a launch point for future missions to Mars. The program has many goals, chief among them to learn how to live on the surface of another planet.
But the moon’s surface is a harsh and hostile environment. Micrometeorites pelting the surface like missiles, 400-degree temperature swings, and the constant risk of radiation exposure from the sun create many obstacles for putting long-term settlements on the lunar surface. On the moon, we will have to supply the same foundations of human survival as we do on Earth including water, shelter, food, and oxygen. NASA is partnering with public and private partners to solve these problems.
So how will astronauts access these vital resources needed for survival? NASA won’t be able to bring sufficient life-sustaining resources from Earth, so they’ll have to make it upon arrival.
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Scientists to Broadcast New Message to ETs Across the Galaxy
Scientists are planning a new message for any potential extraterrestrials in the universe, by sending a cosmic ‘hello’ to any intelligent life in space.
When we make contact with extraterrestrials, how will we communicate with them? What if we sent them a message showing information about Earth, humanity, and our technological capabilities?
That was the idea behind the Arecibo message in 1974, designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan. The now-famous message was the most powerful broadcast sent into space, from the, now defunct, Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. The binary message consisted of our solar system, strands of DNA, a human figure, and chemicals related to Earth, among other things.
Now, nearly 50 years later an international team of researchers introduced a new message intended for extraterrestrials. The team, led by Jonathan Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, felt it was time to update the Arecibo message since we have come so far technologically since 1974.
The proposed message dubbed “the beacon in the galaxy” will include some similar information as Arecibo, including, “[B]asic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System’s time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth’s surface.
