A new video released by the European Space Agency (ESA) indicates their intention of landing and building structures on the Moon.
According to Ars Technica, the video, entitled “The Moon Awakens,” sees the ESA saying it will take lessons learned from the International Space Station as well as by NASA’s Apollo missions and apply them to more effective and meaningful moon visitations.
“This new exploration will be achieved not in competition, as in the past, but through peaceful, international cooperation,” the narrator says. “Eventually we will see a sustained infrastructure for research and exploration where humans will live and work for prolonged periods. Here we will put into practice the lessons of the International Space Station, to establish a facility akin to those we see in Antarctica today. In the future the moon can become a place where the nations of the world work together.”
Since President Obama’s 2010 speech, during which he signaled that he had no intention of supporting another mission to the Moon, the United States has made no moves with respect to putting more men on the moon for any reason.
However, recently NASA’s budget was increased in order to help facilitate a manned Mars mission projected to take place in the 2030s. As a result, it comes as a bit of a shock that the ESA, as well as a number of other international space groups, seem so dead set on visiting the Moon.
Even in the United States, though, the benefits of a new mission or series of missions to the moon seems as obvious: recently, a US law was passed that will allow US companies to mine lunar resources, like water ice that could be converted into fuel.