From the Coloradan Alumni Magazine: On Dec. 13, 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped off the surface of the moon and onto a ladder leading up the Challenger lunar module.
“We leave as we came,” he’d proclaimed a moment earlier, “and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
But nearly 47 years later, we still haven’t: No human from any country has been back to the moon.
Now, as the United States prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary, on July 20, of Neil Armstrong’s first lunar step, the nation is again getting serious about going back. In April, Vice President Mike Pence vowed NASA would return astronauts to the moon by 2024.
The space agency is already testing the Orion spacecraft, a capsule designed by Lockheed Martin that is expected to deliver astronauts there. Plans are also underway for an orbiting space station called the Lunar Gateway, which could serve as a base of operations for astronauts shuttling to and from the lunar surface.
CU Boulder’s Jack Burns, who served on the Trump administration’s NASA transition team and was present for Pence’s pledge, has been waiting a long time for this moment — not for the sake of adventure or geopolitics, but for science. He envisions humans living and working on the moon, using it as a platform for seeing the cosmos’ origins.
“When I hear people say ‘been there, done that for science on the moon, I tell them ‘You are nuts,’” said Burns, a professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences who also directs the NASA-funded Network for Exploration and Space Science at CU. Read more...