All the planned new attention -- close-up picture sessions, hits by pinpricking penetrators, radar sweeps of the cratered terrain, and even snag-and-bag rock collecting by automated machinery -- puts the Moon back on the exploration map.

Armed with new data, human visitors may once again visit Earth’s only natural satellite, this time to survey the scene and set up a permanent science outpost.

Space experts outlined their approaches at The Moon Beyond 2002: Next Steps in Lunar Science and Exploration, held here Sept. 12-14. The meeting was hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory.

There is no doubt that the Moon is making a comeback. So say members of an "extended family" of lunar researchers from around the globe.

Just a scant three days away as the rocket flies -- given a powerful engine push -- Earth's celestial next-door neighbor is a floating time capsule . Clues as to how planets formed and evolved reside there. And the airless hunk of unreal estate also holds insight into the early history of the Earth.

Furthermore, the Moon is a natural space station.

It is loaded with materials to fuel, quite literally, a new and renewed wave of exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Hydrogen, perhaps in the form of water ice , resides at the Moon's poles within craters that never see daylight.

There is growing interest in the Moon, not only for scientific and commercial benefit, but also for its military utility as a propellant storehouse.

Getting back to the Moon via NASA means, for now, a robotic probing of the Aitken basin at the south pole. Such a project is a likely candidate for the space agency's New Frontiers class of spacecraft. That program could cough up some $650 million to bankroll an Aitken "dig, stash and dash" sample-return lander effort, perhaps taking place by 2009.

"We need a program, not a one-shot deal," James Head, planetary geologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said at the conference. "We're entering a new phase of exploration…and the Moon is the place."

NASA has company in its desire to reactivate American lunar exploration.

Several Department of Defense (DoD) organizations -- such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Naval Research Laboratory -- are exploring new technologies ideal for future lunar science and exploration objectives.

"The DoD is embarking on a rather major program to develop technologies for microsatellites and the ability to get them into space," said U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Simon Worden, deputy director of operations for the U.S. Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. Several small satellites could be directed to the Moon, to orbit well as land on it. Such an effort could be accomplished in a few years time, Worden said.

These ultra-small spacecraft would ride their way into geosynchronous transfer orbit as a secondary payload on some craft with another primary mission. The tiny probes would then make a propulsive beeline to the Moon. Trip time to the Moon: some 97 days.

"We think we can take a microsatellite and land in some location of the Moon with a useful payload," Worden said. "The total cost per mission, once we carry out the development of this, is in the $10 million to $15 million range per mission. This could open up a whole new era. Clearly the Moon and near Earth objects, the asteroids, are primary targets of this."

Paul Spudis, Deputy Director and Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, is a scientific consultant on the military's ideas for a microsatellite work. Advanced lightweight propulsion systems , new spacecraft data processing hardware, and tiny but super-slick sensors are being built, he said.

"With a microsatellite, you can get very close to the Moon and get very high resolution," Spudis said. One scenario is to use side-looking radar to gain new views of the surface.

"You would actually image the dark areas you can't see into," Spudis told SPACE.com. "You could completely map every spot near the Moon's South Pole. But more importantly, side-looking radar is a great way to look for ice."

There will be a several spacecraft headed moonward next year.

Now being prepared for takeoff is the Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology, or SMART-1 spacecraft. It’s being built by the European Space Agency (ESA) and dedicated to test new technologies for adoption by bigger projects.

SMART-1 will rely on solar electric primary propulsion.

The craft is slated to fly in March 2003 as an Ariane-5 auxiliary payload, said Bernard Foing, ESA's SMART-1 Project Scientist. The probe's cruise to the Moon will take 15 to 17 months depending on the precise launch date.

Foing said that SMART-1 has the ability to provide vital data about the presence and the distribution of lunar water ice and will chart the global composition of the Moon.

Europe's entrée into lunar exploration via SMART-1 is part of a larger roadmap, one that includes an "international robot village." These automatons could prepare the Moon for follow-on human explorers, Foing said.

A "penetrating" look at the Moon is on tap for Japan's Lunar-A probe, to be lofted in August-September of next year, said Hitoshi Mizutani, a professor at the Division of Planetary Science at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) -- the core institution dedicated to space and astronautical science research in Japan.

The ISAS Lunar-A is to be boosted into space using an M-V launch vehicle from Kagoshima Space Center, near Uchinoura Japan (at the southeast end of Kyushu). Taking about a year to arrive at the Moon, the spacecraft then tosses off two missile-shaped, instrument-loaded penetrators.

Once free of the main spacecraft, each penetrator will fire a solid-rocket motor to cancel out their orbital velocity around the Moon. Gas jets align the penetrators nose-first as they free-fall toward the lunar surface. One device is to hit the Moon's near side, the other on the far side, Mizutani said.

Each penetrator is packed with about 29-pounds (13-kilograms) of temperature sensors, an accelerometer, thermal conductivity probes, and two short-period seismometers. At the moment of impact, the penetrators will experience a g-force greater than 6,000 (1g is the normal force of gravity felt on Earth).

Testing of the needle-nosed gear has shown they should come to rest at a depth of 3-feet to 10 feet (one to three meters).

"It's a very high-impact encounter," Mizutani said.

Each penetrator has a lifetime of one-year at a minimum. But that depends on how much seismic activity, or "moonquakes," they detect. Data gleaned by the penetrator seismometers -- approximately 5 times as sensitive as those deployed by Apollo astronauts -- and other information is sent upwards to the Lunar-A spacecraft in lunar orbit, for relay back to Earth.

Mizutani detailed another Japanese Moon project called the Selenological and Engineering Explorer, or SELENE.

ISAS and the National Space Development Agency of Japan are working together to launch SELENE in 2005. At present, it's the largest lunar program since Apollo, Mizutani said. This spacecraft is five times larger than Lunar-A and carries two subsatellites built for release in lunar orbit.

The primary objective of SELENE is to study the origin and evolution of the Moon. For one, it will globally map the Moon's topography during its pole to pole touring. The probe is to be outfitted with a high-definition television camera system that beams video back to home audiences.

As epic making as the Apollo program of the late 1960s into the early 1970s was to lunar exploration, the Moon largely remains terra incognita.

The Moon beckons as a high priority port of call for further scientific and human exploration.

Furthermore, NASA is misdirected by setting its sights too firmly on Mars and the search for life on the red planet, said lunar scientist Paul Spudis. NASA's own Office of Space Science, as well as former space agency chief, Daniel Goldin, have "suppressed this [lunar science] community in favor of Mars," he said.

"I don't think you can conduct a human mission to Mars for less than a $100 billion in any time shorter than ten years," Spudis said. "The technology base will only marginally support a human Mars mission. It's just a bridge too far. I contend that NASA doesn't have a politically viable mission."

What is workable is sending back astronauts to the Moon, and doing it within 5 years. An initial mission could involve dispatching four people onto the lunar surface, and enabling them to stay for 45 days.

"In one fell swoop you exceed by an order of magnitude the total operational experience of Apollo," Spudis said. "We need to go back to understand how to use the resources on the Moon."

Spudis said that buried within NASA is a progressive plan for placing humans back onto the Moon. NASA Exploration Team (NExT) members at the Johnson Space Center, he said, have scripted a breakthrough strategy.

The NExT concept makes use of existing launch capability and existing technology to establish a staging point at a so-called Earth-Moon Lagrangian Point, L1. Here’s why L1 is important:

In each system of two heavy bodies (the Sun and Jupiter, or Earth and its Moon) there exist five theoretical points in space at which a third and small body, under the gravitational influence of the two large ones, will remain approximately at rest relative to them.

From the Earth-Moon L1 point, a window to any spot on the Moon is reachable with minimal rocket energy.

An ideal crew touchdown locale, Spudis added, is the rim of Shakleton crater near the Moon's South Pole. This setting is bathed in near-constant sunlight. Yet the site is close to sizable deposits of possible water ice tucked away in always-shadowed craters.

"I think it's the most valuable piece of real estate in the solar system," Spudis said. "This is the place to put the lunar base."

On a return leg back to Earth, astronauts could dwell at in their return vehicle or at a space port set up at the L1 gateway. They would wait for the proper timing, then perform an aerocapture maneuver at Earth, slowing down for a rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Spudis points out that as decades have passed, NASA has lost a lot of valuable experience as Apollo-era astronauts and managers have retired.

"No one at NASA has any direct experience with lunar flight," he said. "So why not give them some by going back to the Moon?"

Images:

L1 Gateway could be a link back to the Moon. This hub would support traffic plying between the International Space Station and the Moon.	Explorers set up equipment as prelude to extensive use of Moon for propellant production, and carrying out an array of science duties.
Japan's Lunar-A is slated to head toward the Moon in 2003. It carries twin penetrators that will plunge into the lunar surface and relay science data.	Lunar-A penetrators will be deployed on the Moon's near-side and far-side.