The moon has been Earth’s constant
companion for 4.5 billion years. Now it’s finally back
in the focus of science, almost 50 years after man
last set foot on the moon. There’s more people as a percent
of the total people on this earth who were not alive when
we had our last lunar landing. Itś been that long, right, and we havent
done the next thing and so some people say weve been there, done that, but we havent
done, because we just touched the ground, painted the
flag and left. Right, we havent really
lived, we havent explored truly. If you want to commit the
money to it like we did in Apollo, you can do it in
probably 10 years, easy. We did it in 8
years and 2 months. Now scientists are concentrating on ways to
grow food, produce energy, and make tools. All over the world, researchers
are working on a return to the moon, and to stay there
for longer this time. We have to use the moon to operationally
understand how to live and work on a planet. There are many
ideas, many plans, but actually putting them into
practice is the final step that is missing. It will be great to see
humans return to the moon. When this will
happen is not yet clear. But science is making it
possible to survive on the moon. On this Wednesday in 1969,
the world was holding its breath. Mankind was witnessing
a historic mission. On board
Apollo 11, astronauts Neil Armstrong,
Michael Collins and Edwin Buzz Aldrin had a goal mankind had not
yet reached — to fly to the moon. 5 days later, in the early
morning of 21st July, Neil Armstrong uttered
his unforgettable words: Thatś one small step for
man, one giant leap for mankind. Armstrong and Aldrin spent a total of
2.5 hours on the surface of the moon. As they collected rock samples
and raised the American flag, they were watched live
by 600 million people. Only a few of them were aware that the
moon landing was hanging by a thread. In NASA’s mission
control centre in Houston, CapCom Charlie Duke had direct
radio contact with Neil Armstrong. Now 82 years old, he can still recall
the dramatic moments with precision. We got very,
very tight on fuel. I called 60 seconds, which
means he’s got 60 seconds to land, I called 30 seconds, the
tension is rising in mission control. You could hear a pin drop. We were
holding our breath. Will we make it? I called 30 seconds and then
13 seconds later he landed. But it was very, very tight
and very close to an abort. Yet the first lunar
landing was a success. 3 years later, Charlie Duke got his
own entry in the annals of space travel. John Young and I were the fifth
landing on the moon back in April 1972 and I was the tenth man
to step onto the moon. Once we landed, I just
erupted with enthusiasm. We had our helmets on and fully suited
up and I just shouted into my helmet: Houston! Old Orion is
finally here. Fantastic! On the surface
of the moon, Charlie and his commander John
Young carried out experiments, for example on radiation
protection and heat flow. It was awesome. It was like one of
the most beautiful deserts I’d ever seen. Grey, very rough topography, up and down,
hilly craters, rocks, hills everywhere. And our objective was
to explore this valley. I was excited, in all I was very
happy to be there. It was wonderful. I was almost overcome with the thought
‘Im on the moon, Im on the moon’. Yee-Haw,
whoo! Thatś it. Weŕe, weŕe going.
Home again, home again, Jiggity-Jig. On 24 April 1972,
they lifted off again. Half a year later only one
further Apollo mission followed. Im very disappointed that we
havent had somebody go back. I thought that NASA would be extremely
optimistic about going back to the moon. We need to build a station on
the moon, similar to Antarctica, where we have a science
station in Antarctica and there is a very
hostile climate in Antarctica, but we do it and I think we could
do the same thing on the moon. Antarctica is the Earth’s
most extreme continent. Nowhere else is this cold, with
temperatures of -90°C being measured here. 98% of the mainland
is covered by ice, that’s 3/4 of the Earth’s
freshwater reserves. The surface is 1.5x the size of Europe, and
twice as large during the Antarctic winter. Only a few animals
can survive here. Several types of penguin,
such as the emperor penguin, have adapted to the hostile
environment, as have a few types of seals. The conditions here in
the eternal ice resemble the barrenness of the
moon most closely. Which is why a team of
researchers from Bremen have made the long
journey to the far South. The four team members of the
German Aerospace Center (DLR) will spend two months at the
research station Neumayer III. Since 2009, scientists have
been conducting research here with different focuses such as meteorology,
geology and atmospheric chemistry. The architecture of
the Neumayer III station has been adapted to the
environmental conditions of the Antarctic. It is built on stilts to
keep it free of snow drifts. Up to 60 scientists stay
here in the Antarctic summer, between November
and February. Aerospace engineer Paul Zabel
is the only member of his team who will also spend
the winter here. His task is to grow fresh vegetables
as part of the EDEN ISS project. The idea is to try out all of the necessary
technology and operational procedures here in the Antarctic so that in future,
a greenhouse can also work in space. We are growing between 15
and 20 different species of plant, as a highlight we also
have little strawberry plants. We hope we can get them to flower so we
can harvest strawberries in a few months. Until the mobile greenhouse
reaches the Antarctic by ship, the team has to take care of
the delicate strawberry plants. Inside the
station, Daniel Schubert and Conrad Zeidler have
tried to create the most ideal conditions. Strawberries are difficult to cultivate
and that’s why we have improvised and built our own little
makeshift greenhouse. Of course it’s not optimal, but we
don’t have much of an alternative if we want to keep the
strawberry plants alive. It will take at least a few more
days for the greenhouse to arrive. Then the experiment here can really
get going. And soon, on the moon? In order to live and work on
the moon for a longer time, worldwide research has to
consider the conditions there and the differences
to planet Earth. 71% of the Earth
is covered in water. It has an atmosphere, a layer of air
and gases that surround it and protect it, for example from meteorite impact and
damage from various types of radiation. It also ensures that
temperature swings are moderate. 400,000 kilometres away, things
look rather different on the moon. Water would have to be extracted from lunar
sand by evaporating and condensing it. The moon has no atmosphere to protect
it from the impact of any flying objects. It is also exposed to
dangerous cosmic radiation. Temperatures rise and fall so dramatically
that humans could not easily survive. To make that
possible in the future, international students of the
European Space Agency (ESA) are conducting research with
various experiments in the EAC, the European training centre
for astronauts in Cologne. Dr. Aidan Cowley is in charge
of the Spaceship EAC project. Outside the building a lunar station will
be built for test and research purposes. So what you are looking at
is a foundation at the moment, but in the next few months this is
going to rapidly change into a building. We are going to have a
large 34m diameter dome. We are going to have 700 tons
of regolith, or regolith simulant - regolith is the name of the
material you find on the lunar surface. A small settlement,
for now in Cologne, but in the not too distant
future, one on the moon too. This is how ESA scientists
imagine it will look. Inside, there is an airlock
and a technical area. The main room is
provided with daylight. Like in the ISS, the oxygen supply is
provided by chemically based air preparation. Another good example of why we
should go back to the moon would be to understand the
radiation environment. If you are in lower
orbit at the moment, you might have interference of earth
protecting you to a certain degree, but if you go beyond this, you
go to the lunar environment, you no longer
have that protection. And now you are going to an
entire new radiation environment that will have a different
effect on humans. The lunar habitat will protect humans from
this radiation with a strong outer layer. This is the protective
layer that we want to build. The idea is that we take the
material that is already on the moon and by applying the microwaves we
could print around the new lunar habitat and build like a solid structure that would
protect the lunar habitat from meteorites, the radiation
and so on. Student Oriane Garcia from
France is producing the heat required to sinter the powdery regolith,
baking it into a hard layer. At the moment, however, it looks
more like pebbles than a flat surface. On the moon, special robot
vehicles would spread the lunar sand and sinter it at the same time,
which would take about three months. Back then, the Apollo astronauts
didn’t have such a protective building. Well in three days
it wasnt that bad. You can survive with just the
regular protection that we had. It took about 40 years for
the scientists to figure out what the Apollo missions
really brought back. It takes that long. You have to develop
the instruments to be sensitive enough to learn what these stones, you
know 300kg, almost 400kg of stones, that have been brought back from
the moon, what they really tell us. As you come around there, there
is a rock in the near field to that rim that has some white at the top, wed
like you to pick it up as a grab sample. The 12 Apollo astronauts were
not allowed to keep any souvenirs. The original lunar regolith
was simply too valuable. Just a stone’s throw away from the ESA
is the DLR’s Institute for Solar Research. Here, too, scientists are researching
regolith radiation protection. Professor Matthias Sperl and his team seek
the most moon-like conditions possible. What is available in
abundance on the moon is moon dust and plenty
of radiation from the sun. We would need several metres
of moon rock or moon dust as protection from radiation from
the sun and other cosmic sources, and that is one of the
things we are researching. The experiment is called Regolight, a
word coined to combine regolith and light. Of course, it does not use real
lunar regolith, but the simulant JSC-02, which has similar properties and
will be sintered to an entire brick using layered
3D printing. What we want to show is that we can really
produce a 3D object, whether X, Y or Z, in a vacuum and this is the
technology we are developing here. There is a vacuum on
the surface of the moon. To simulate this, Miranda Fateri
and Alexandre Meurisse from France are the creating the experiment
in a vacuum chamber. Our objective is to see mechanical properties
if we sinter something in a vacuum. If something better comes out, can we
construct a better building with it or not. The strong xenon beams imitate the sun and
create a constant heat of around 1,100°C. Channelled into one ray they hit the
three levels of moving moon sand below. It can take up to 5 hours under lunar
conditions to bake a 3D-object like a brick. We want to see whether anything
comes out under the vacuum and then do the chemical analysis, but
the chamber is too small and very hot. When we have a bigger chamber we can build a
better cooling system and bigger components. Scientists have to find the right
parameters so that, in future, today’s result will look like the
bricks sintered without a vacuum. As a last step, they have to replace the
artificial light with their solar furnace, which consists of 159 square mirrors
and concentrates the light energy. It produces the necessary heat through
constant sun radiation as exists on the moon. You have to make use of
every resource you have. And so I think 3D-printing
structures for habitats, for habitations, all these things we can do now
with this existing infrastructure, existing materials on the surface will
be something we want to take advantage of. Back to the
Antarctic. The conditions can
change unpredictably, with the possibility of wind speeds of
up to 60 knots — that’s hurricane force. The weather here
is the deciding factor. It’s exactly the right testing
ground for the DLR scientists, who can find the right extreme
conditions for their research here. The Antarctic is the most remote continent
of the world, it’s not easy to reach. The people living here are dependent
on the technology which keeps them alive, just like in a
space mission, so it’s the best place to test the
whole operation of the greenhouse. Almost everything is prepared
for their project EDEN ISS, where they plan to grow vegetables and
even strawberries in a mobile greenhouse. This platform has been
standing here a while, 400m away from the German
research station Neumayer III. The mobile greenhouse should
have arrived here days ago. But the cargo boat
transporting it to the site is making slow headway
through the thick pack ice. 14,000 km away, moon
research is also being carried out. Various experiments for the Project
Spaceship EAC are being carried out at the European Astronaut
training Center in Cologne. Belgian student Sander Coene
is working on a virtual environment where future visitors
to the moon can train. With a simulation
like this, we can train them in virtual reality as
if they were already on the lunar base and then have them
interact with a digital rack and completely be able to
do the experiment beforehand instead of just being in training
room with a rack in front of you. The virtual moonscape is
still in the development phase. At some point however it could help
with the preparation of future missions. A few rooms away, colleague Miquel Regidor
is busy working with different devices. His specialist
area is 3D printing. This is a 3D printer
and it works with polymer and the polymer is behind and basically
it warms up in here and then it melts. And when it melts you
can put it over a surface, it gets cold so it sticks to the bed
and then you can print lane by lane and then layer by layer
and make a 3D-object. Heating,
melting, printing. But for the
next step, Miquel is particularly interested
in the reusability of the plastic. What we are doing here is to check if
the materials work properly on the moon. And afterwards basically we
would check our piece if we crush it and we re-extrude it once
again and print it again, if it works the same
as the object before. The coil containing the plastic
would of course have to be much larger when it is transported
to the moon. But once it’s there, the
plastic could always be reused. In Bordeaux, the 3D printing process
is being researched in a parabolic flight. Professor Jens Günster
from BAM in Berlin, the German federal
materials testing institute, has developed equipment with his
team to enable parts such as tools to be made from metal
powder in zero gravity. The objective of the experiment is to try
out a new process of sucking in powder and then trying to fix it, in
a zero-gravity environment, so in principle you can
produce parts on-demand. The part which has been sintered
with the laser onto this plate should be able to be taken
out and is ready for use. Before each flight, the scientists draw
their conclusions from the previous flight, making minor adjustments to try and
improve the results of their experiment. This is our third flight day, last
time we switched the material and this time we have adjusted
the parameters of the equipment to be able to apply
the layer of powder. I’d say we manage to get about 70% of the
powder onto the layer, the rest flies away. We need to improve that, we
can’t have the powder flying around. The Berlin research
team is just one of many. In total the participants here in Bordeaux
fly for four hours on each of three days. There are 31
parabolas per flight. The aircraft rises steeply
upwards from its horizontal position. Reduces the thrust of the turbines and
flies for about 22 seconds at zero gravity. That is a particular
challenge for the scientists, as the gravitational force
during a parabolic flight varies. They have adapted the structure
of their experiment accordingly. The experimental
apparatus looks like this: The metal powder is in a container
at the beginning of the parabolic flight. From there it is spread in
a layer over the base plate. So that it doesn’t
fly away in zero gravity, it is sucked in by gas from below and
kept on the base plate, also during Zero G. Then a laser melts the relevant information
onto the freshly applied powder. It melts the loose metal
powder into a compact structure. This is done with every layer, producing
a 3D object, in this case a spanner. Günster and his team can follow this
process, which is repeated several times, via the installed
webcams. The final result can be seen
a little later in the laboratory. The metal powder has really been
transformed into two small spanners. The experiment by Günster’s
research group was a success. In the not too distant future, all tools
could be produced this way in space. In the Antarctic,
the long wait is over. The cargo ship, the Agulhas II from South
Africa has managed to break through the ice and the unloading
can finally take place. After a
10-day delay, the DLR scientists watch their mobile
greenhouse being unloaded from the ship. Unloading on the
ice has its hazards. Although the area
around the ship is frozen, the layer of ice is
thinner than further inland. The whole process
takes around 90 minutes. In the end all is well, and the
squad sets off back to base. It’s 23 km away from the
unloading point to Neumayer III. Although there is no darkness
in the Antarctic summer, as the sun never goes down, they
still have a regulated 8 hour working day. This day ends with the long-awaited
arrival of the container at the station. The next day begins early.
It’s time to build the greenhouse. The scientists have a whole
freight container full of equipment which they have to unpack and
inspect after such a long journey. At the same time, the mobile
greenhouse is assembled. It’s made up of two 6m-long containers and is
precision-lifted by crane onto the platform. Once this task has been completed,
the EDEN ISS project can really get going. Looking inside
the container, we can see how the Antarctic
greenhouse works in detail. The first part contains the services
sector, where all the technical systems such as air and heat management
are monitored and controlled. The second part contains
herbs, vegetables, and lettuces, which can all self-pollinate
with the help of ventilation. The technology which allows
them to grow is called Aeroponik. Instead of transporting
heavy soil into space, the roots of the plant are sprayed
with a water-nutrient solution. LED lamps containing
the right colour composition are then mounted
above to imitate sunlight. Water and air cleaning systems complete
an independent and sustainable ecosystem. People think that the
plants are only for us to eat. But there are other reasons
we take the plants with us. They provide us with oxygen to breathe,
they need the C0² we humans breathe out. It’s a perfect symbiosis
between plants and humans. Four days after the
arrival of the container, everything is installed
to start up operations. Almost two weeks
later than planned, the DLR scientists can
finally start sowing the seeds. Of course the long nurtured
strawberry plant has top priority. As carefully as if they
were performing surgery, Schubert and Zeidler take
care of the sensitive plant. After bathing it in water, the
strawberry plant is put into its new home using mineral wool
and a plastic holder. The researchers are optimistic
that most of the plants will thrive. But they are concerned about the
diva of their crops, the strawberry plant. If you go on long term missions
such as the one to the moon, you can use strawberries
as an incentive food, just to keep the isolated
team in good mental shape. If this experiment works
here in the Antarctic, we’re pretty confident that the
whole thing will work on the moon too. But on the moon the conditions are
more difficult, and more unpredictable. Although the container can stand without
being secured further due to the gravity, the parts of the autonomous system
still have to be transported there. Yet there is one key component missing on
the moon, guaranteed here by the connection to the Neumayer
III Station: a constant electricity supply. In Edinburgh, Scotland, a team is
working on a solution to this problem. At the Heriot-Watt
University, researcher Jürgen Schleppi is
working on the topic of solar energy. Of course on the moon we can’t
just plug our devices into sockets, we have to consider what kind of resources
are available for producing energy. There are no rivers, there is no wind
on the moon, there is no atmosphere. What is available is sunlight
and it’s better than on earth, because it is not weakened
by the atmosphere. Jürgen Schleppi wants to
produce mirrors to create energy. His experiment is also about
how to use lunar regolith. We will have the materials we’ve brought
with us and there is this basaltic sand. What we can build out of basaltic
sand is relatively simple bricks or walls, by heating the material or
baking, we can go one step further and produce basaltic
glass from the material. Schleppi uses an ordinary microwave oven
to make glass from the moon sand simulant. He grinds the molten regolith, which has
turned into glass, as smoothly as possible. The glass brick still
needs a reflective surface. This is made in the final, most complicated
part of the mirror production process. On the moon there is an endless vacuum,
but here it has to be created artificially. Schleppi fixes the glass elements
which have been produced in recent weeks onto the frame of
the vacuum chamber. Before he seals it, he adds
one small piece of aluminium, which is heated and then evaporates,
distributing millions of tiny particles. The glass is different, but the aluminium
is the same type we use for normal mirrors. It’s looking
pretty good now. It’s not transparent anymore, so
we can slowly turn off the system. The aluminium which
was heated in the vacuum is not only supposed to coat the inside
of the vacuum chamber’s glass dome. It is primarily meant to coat
the experimental glass stones. It looks
really good. The mirrors have
turned out really well, they should be able to reflect
our artificial sunlight well. That’s what matters at
the end of his experiment. It will only be a success if
the mirrors made of moon sand can also harness
energy from light. To test it, the researcher
has built his own construction. His home-made DIY mirrors
have to pass the comparison test. So here we have a reference
surface, which reflects sunlight, or rather the artificial light we are going
to produce, from this surface to the lens, which is attached
to a solar cell. The lens concentrates
the light onto the solar cell and then we can produce electricity,
which we can measure at a certain voltage, we can read it
here on the meter. With the reference surface mirror we expect
about to produce about 2V. Lights out! 2.46V. That looks
good, it’s working. 2.46V are produced with
an ordinary mirror surface. This is a reference level for the
mirror made of the imitation lunar sand. We’re going to find out now whether
it will work in the way we imagine. 2.23 volts.
That’s great. We’re only losing about 10%
compared to the reference mirror surface, that’s really good
for the first attempt. Very
successful. So the German scientist
has really succeeded in producing energy from
lunar regolith and light. If we can mine those resources
and turn them into mirrors or another solar type of energy, thatś
definitely going to be a way to maintain a base, or a
presence, on the moon. But the biggest challenge, I think,
for living on the surface on the moon, is dealing with the power needs,
dealing with the infrastructure to maintain systems,
especially during the lunar night. What is interesting about the moon
is almost anywhere on the surface, you are going to experience
14 continuous earth days of light followed by 14 continuous
earth days of night. This day and night rhythm of the moon can be
illustrated with the help of a solar cell, which would be positioned on the side of
the moon that we always see from Earth. This phenomenon arises due to
so-called synchronous rotation: The moon needs exactly the
same time to orbit the earth as it does to rotate on its
own axis, almost 28 days. Since it rotates
on its own axis, this means that the side with the
solar cell faces the sun for 14 days. During this period the energy production
by the solar cell is constantly stable. However, for the
other 2 weeks, the solar cell is on the shadow
side facing away from the sun. Solar energy cannot be produced
during the long lunar night. And that night, itś cold, dark,
there is no solar energy to draw from, you’d have to have power that can
keep you alive during those 14 days. So we need small efficient batteries,
we need very efficient solar cells. If we can develop batteries that
can last two weeks for lunar night and do all of the things you want to
do up on the moon during that time, then thatś
the answer. For Duke’s 3-day trip to the moon and
the other equally short Apollo missions, energy was
not a problem. A much greater challenge back then
was moving around in the bulky space suits. The astronauts only learned to
handle it once they reached the moon. There are 3 ways to
move around on the moon. I generally did a walk, regular stiff legged
walk that you can really get going fast. But if I was going uphill, I
would kangaroo hop uphill. I like to skip along. Or whatever you call
it. I cant get my left leg in front of me. Downhill it seemed to be better skip, one
leg in front of the other and down like this. To me it depended on the terrain
that I was on, which one I used. I think we really need a better space
suit to stay on the moon a long time. It is precisely this project, the development
of a space suit for moon and Mars, which is being pursued at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Boston. MIT Professor Dava Newman is
trying to adapt the old space suit to the conditions
on the moon. Because right now the current
space suit weighs 140kg. Itś for space stations, it was for
shuttles, so thatś okay in weightlessness, but when we get to the moon and
Mars, we are in a gravity environment. The moon only has 1/6th of the
earth’s gravity, allowing large leaps. But these can backfire,
especially in heavy spacesuits. How do I make someone much
more like an Olympic athlete? How do I perform and not waste
my energy working against my suit, but put all that energy
into performing? So you really have to think
about a completely different design. The only other way to keep someone
alive and to put pressure on them, is to basically put it
right on to the skin. So thatś called
mechanical counterpressure. Dana’s version of the suit is
skin-tight, exerting pressure on the body and the right pressure
within the body. This means that human tissue is
not stretched and blood doesn’t clot. It is made of three layers: the
inner layer controls body temperature, the middle layer provides
stability and flexibility and the outer
layer is protective. If the suit tears it
can be easily repaired. The outdoor work on the
moon can then continue. With current spacesuits,
a leak could be lethal, as the gas it contains to maintain the
pressure necessary for human survival could
leak out. This complicated technology
is what makes it so heavy and hinders the
astronauts’ movement. A major disadvantage compared
to the moon suit of the future. We have been working on it
for a while, for the last 15 years and so far, it
seems feasible. Their moon suit
is indeed feasible, but whether it will be
deployed remains to be seen. Elsewhere, the successful implementation
of an experiment is more concrete. In the German Aerospace Centre in Bremen,
the scientists of the EDEN ISS project have been back from
the Antarctic for a month. Minus the one who has to stay and look after
the plants in the greenhouse container. Has it all gone
well so far? Since the start of the isolation
it’s actually been quite nice here, at last there aren’t so many
people around, it’s quite pleasant. The greenhouse is doing well,
the plants are growing great. We had a few teething problems at first but
on the whole it’s all going pretty well. The Antarctic gardener regularly
reports via video conference on the development
of the plants. The strawberries were really
sensitive and sadly they didn’t make it. We had to stop the
experiment early. We’re making a new start with
the experiment from scratch, so we don’t have
seedlings in there anymore, we’ve planted them straight from
seed and we think it will be a success. Every day since their return, scientists
have been observing the growth. Today is
harvest day, and gardener Paul Zabel can finally
reap the benefits of his weeks-long work. You can see our first
harvest here on the table. The lettuces have done really well, we’ve
got plenty of those for the next few days. The cucumbers are looking pretty
good, too, some of them are really big. They’re going to
be weighed now, then I think we will probably
have them for dinner tonight. Paul Zabel and the other nine
researchers on Neumayer III station will have fresh
vegetables to eat. Not only today, but during their whole
isolation period in the Antarctic winter. The EDEN ISS project
is already a success, and the basis for a food supply for
future trips to the moon has been created. In a perfect world, we could put a
moon habitat, or at least a greenhouse, on the moon within
the next 15-20 years. But this isn’t
a perfect world. The necessary research funding for
speedy progress is not as easy to come by as it was in times of
the Apollo missions. We dont want to do Apollo
again, that is not what our goal is. Our goal is sustainable
long-term exploration. 50 years after the
first moon landing, we will probably have to wait a few more
years or even decades until the next one. But preliminary
preparations are underway. It’s just an exciting thought that we humans
are able to get together internationally and manage to build a base and a permanent
outpost on the surface of the moon. The return to the moon
is certainly in our genes, we have been given an acquisitive manner in
our heart that wants to go out and explore. Nobody knows how long it will take
until the next lunar mission takes place. But we do know that a lot will revolve
around the moon in the next few years.
