Study urges US return to the moon

WASHINGTON, Sep 20 (Reuters) NASA needs to get ready as soon as possible to return to the moon, if for no other reason than to understand how life evolved here on Earth, the National Research Council urged.

Human explorers should use robots and orbiters to help them scour the moon's surface, atmosphere and craters for clues about how our solar system formed and how life came about, the Council's Space Studies Board said.

And the US space agency should plan on working with other countries to do so.

Thirty years after people last visited the moon, research has been limited. But several countries are now planning missions, including Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency.

''The participation of other nations in lunar exploration is a fact. Coordinated and cooperative international activities would benefit all participants,'' the report reads.

''NASA is encouraged to explicitly plan and carry out activities with the international community for scientific exploration of the moon in a coordinated and cooperative manner.'' In the 1960s and 1970s the missions were aimed mostly at staying ahead of the former Soviet Union as part of the Cold War. Now, they should be about science and discovery, the report said.

''The moon is, above all, a witness to 4.5 billion years of solar system history, and it has recorded that history more completely and more clearly than any other planetary body. Nowhere else can we see back with such clarity to the time when Earth and the other terrestrial planets were formed,'' the report reads.

''Only by returning to the moon to carry out new scientific explorations can we hope to close the gaps in our understanding and learn the secrets that the moon alone has kept for eons.'' The moon has little atmosphere and little or no geologic activity, and thus every asteroid, meteor or piece of space debris to hit it has remained, virtually undisturbed.

Most of the record of Earth's first few billion years has been destroyed by tectonic and geological process and even weather, so scientists have no direct evidence of how or when the atmosphere formed or precisely what factors went into the development and evolution of life.

START AT THE SOUTH POLE ''To document the lunar atmosphere in its pristine state, early observational studies of the lunar atmosphere should be made, along with studies of the sources of the atmosphere and the processes responsible for its loss,'' the report reads.

As for the surface, the moon's south pole is a very good place to start, the report recommends.

''As the oldest and largest basin in the solar system, the south pole-Aitken Basin on the moon is a unique location,'' the report reads. But many diverse sites need to be sampled.

Scientists should agree on which instruments to use, it added.

''Because a globally distributed network of many geophysical stations is critical for these investigations, an international effort should be pursued to coordinate the development of a standard, small set of key instruments (e.g., seismometer, thermal profiler, retro-reflector, etc.) and to cooperate in providing for its wide deployment across the moon,'' the report advised.

''An integrated human/robotic program should be developed using robotic assistants and independent autonomous/teleoperated robotic systems,'' the report adds. Robot rovers have been successful in studying Mars.

And, the moon provides a perfect perch for astronomers and other scientists studying the sun, Earth and other planets.

REUTERS PDM RAI0902