Birkbeck supports new lunar mission
Lunar Mission One is an exploratory robotic mission
Birkbeck is supporting an exciting new project, launched today (19 November 2014) called Lunar Mission One, which aims to send a spacecraft to the South Pole of the Moon.
Lunar Mission One is an exploratory robotic mission that will use pioneering drilling technology to drill down to a depth of at least 20m – almost ten times deeper than has ever been drilled on the moon before. They will access lunar rock dating back up to 4.5 billion years and carry out scientific experiments that will provide significant new insights into the origins and evolution of the Moon and Earth. Scientists in Birkbeck’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences are already involved in studying rock samples from the Moon’s crust to uncover its geological history and evolution. The Lunar Mission One would provide geological measurements from far deeper within the Moon, enabling scientists to increase their understanding of the history of the inner solar system and the geological evolution of rocky planets.
Public funding for these types of mission is limited, so the project will make use of crowdfunding – which includes sales of space in an innovative 21st-century time capsule – to finance the mission. The time capsule will be buried on the South Pole of the Moon as part of the mission and will include a public archive – a digital record of human history and civilisation, and a scientific description of the biosphere with a database of species. The money raised from the crowdfunding will be combined with commercial support to finance the mission costs.
It is also hoped that funds generated by the project will create a long-term legacy – funding a global education programme and establishing a Trust to fund future space missions, changing the way we explore space in the future.
Professor Ian Crawford, from Birkbeck’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, who has been advising on the project said: “Lunar Mission One offers some extraordinary opportunities to learn about the geological history of the Moon, and to perform a number of lunar geophysical measurements. These will help us better understand the origin and history of the Earth-Moon system, and therefore the history of our own planet. The project will also pioneer the development of new technologies to enable us to carry out automated scientific drilling on other planets, for example Mars, in the future. Perhaps most exciting of all, Lunar Mission One may herald a new age of public participation in space exploration from which science and education, and indeed our wider culture, can only benefit.”