December 1972 - Apollo 17 Astronaut Eugene 'Gene' Cernan was the last human on the Moon (Photo: NASA)

A team of European scientists wants to send people back to the moon, ending the 40-year break from human lunar exploration.

The group not only wants to see a resumption of lunar exploration, but it recommends those efforts be dramatically stepped-up.

In a report to be published in “Planetary and Space Science,” the authors argue sending humans back to the moon, placing new scientific instruments on, and returning additional samples from the surface of the moon, will help us better understand the history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout Solar System.

The last time a human walked on the moon was during the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

The USSR's Luna 24 unmanned lunar explorer was the last to go and return from the moon in August 1976 (Image: NASA)

The scientists believe a renewed emphasis on exploration of the moon would also provide a number of research opportunities in astronomy, astrobiology, fundamental physics, life sciences, human physiology and medicine.

Over the past decade, there’s been something of a renaissance in lunar exploration. A number of unmanned spacecraft – from the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan, China, India and the U.S. – have orbited the moon, but none have performed a controlled landing on its surface.  The last spacecraft to touch down on the moon and return to Earth was Russia’s Luna 24 robotic mission in August 1976.

However, a portion of the US Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and India’s Chandrayaan-1 Moon Impact Probe (MIP) were deliberately crashed into the moon’s surface in order to perform experiments required by their missions.

Although some of their objectives can still be achieved robotically,  the European science team says lunar exploration would benefit significantly from renewed human operations on the moon.

Artist Concept of the unmanned Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter currently orbiting and mapping the moon at 50 kilometers from lunar surface. (Image: NASA)

They recommend current and future non-manned lunar exploration missions be developed in the context of future human exploration, similar to what’s outlined in 2007’s Global Exploration road map which recommends an expansion of human presence throughout the Solar System and human exploration missions to the surface of Mars.

Following the framework of a 1992 study by the European Space Agency, the paper’s authors propose their lunar science objectives can logically be divided into three categories:

• Science of the moon (study of the moon itself)
• Science on the moon (studies that use the moon’s surface as a platform for experiments, not related to the moon itself.
• Science from the moon (using the lunar surface as a base to conduct astronomical observations).

Photo: NASA/JPL

Looking up at the Moon from our blue planet Earth, it’s hard to see anything other than a barren landscape.  Devoid of any life, it’s a visual study in dusty shades of gray.

But recently scientists from Case Western Reserve University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Brown University have found that parts of the Moon’s interior contains as much water as the upper mantle of the Earth, more than 100 times what was measured before.

Examining moon material brought back to earth back in 1972 by the US Apollo 17 mission, the researchers were able to find water along with other volatile elements such as fluorine, chlorine and sulfur.

One of the scientists involved with this discovery is James Van Orman, a professor of geological studies at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio.  “These samples provide the best window we have to the amount of water in the interior of the Moon,” says Van Orman.  “The interior seems to be pretty similar to the interior of the Earth, from what we know about water abundance.”

This discovery seems to strengthen the theory that the Moon and Earth have a common origin but at the same time may force scientists to reconsider the current theory of the process: that a huge impact in Earth’s early history ejected material into orbit that became the Moon.

Published in the May 26 edition of Science Express, this finding is said to challenge previously made assumptions on how the Moon came to be and provides new clues into the process of lunar formation.