There are many moons in the solar system but none quite like ours. Maggie Aderin-Pocock explains how the moon protects us: the moon is our celestial partner in space. Meteors are drawn to moon and hit the moons surface rather than Earth's surface and therefore the moon is protecting us. The moon has also potentially given us life on earth with tidal pools created by the moon triggering early life.
One of the reasons Maggie would love to go to the moon is to see the earth from that distance: 'Everything you know and love represented by a small pale blue dot.' This iconic view of the earth as a vulnerable distant globe and as a living body that we should be protecing, triggered in us a desire to protect our planet and began the environmental movement.
The moon is orbiting us and over the last 4.5 billion years the moon is spiraling further and further away from us. We can measure the Earth/Moon distance very accurately and we’ve been measuring for 50 years, so we know the moon is moving away about 3cm a year. As the moons rotation slows down it starts to gyrate. Many years in the future the north and south pole could end up in the equator...
There are new lunar missions all the time. In the past it was NASA and Russia competing for discoveries and breakthroughs, but now its China and India and Japan. Can we develop mining on the moon, and perhaps fuel? Can we create a Moon base? A Moon village, setting up people who live on the Moon, is in development. The plan would be to create habitats there. Nasa ’s lunar gateway is being suggested as a base on the moon from which we could then go on to Mars.
Exoplanets are being explored, which are planets going around other stars outside our solar system, about 4,000 other planets have been found. Maybe we should be looking for planets with Moons? Maggie Aderin-Pocock suggests that if we look for exo-moons we might find life. The Moon is the mother of life.
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