Has Science Taken A Back Seat When It Comes To Lunar Exploration?

50 years after NASA managed to land men on the Moon, has science always taken the proverbial “back seat” when it comes to lunar exploration?

By: Ringo Bones

As humanity celebrates the 50^th Anniversary of the Moon landing, it seems that – then and now – science has always taken the proverbial “back seat” when it comes for reasons for the multi-billion dollar lunar exploration missions. With NASA and the powers that be at Capitol Hill already has serious plans for returning to the Moon, it seems that the “science part” of the upcoming missions – like checking out those water deposits that were spotted by visiting unmanned robotic spacecraft during the past few years are usually mentioned last during a typical press interview. Though it is quite refreshing that during a somewhat “misogynistic” U.S. administration that there has been emphasis on sending the first woman astronaut to the Moon as part of the team who will be landing there as soon as 2024, when it comes to the science part of the mission, the intrepid researcher has typically has to “Google deeply” or check out books that were first published back in 1970.

During my elementary and high school days back in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the “scientific instruments” bought by the first trio of NASA astronauts to the Moon – i.e. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins – were not quite general knowledge. It wasn’t until one delves deeply in their local library to find out that the first trio of astronauts did carry a tinfoil made shade to capture “solar wind” particles, a portable seismograph to test for “Moon quakes” and a quartz laser retro-reflector to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon to an accuracy of less than 1 centimeter. The first trio of astronauts who land on the lunar surface may not be “professional scientists” but their mission is for all intents and purposes is a “scientific mission” that’s shrouded in Cold War era politics.