Humans and the moon: A closer look at an evolving relationship

The moon is cycling through the news ahead of a new chapter in space. The first private mission to touch down on the lunar surface may land as early as February. Separately, NASA aims to send astronauts back to the moon within the next few years. 

Rebecca Boyle, a science journalist, urges deeper interrogation into the impulse to return more than 50 years after the last American landing. Controversy surfaced late last year when the Navajo Nation decried a commercial mission for carrying human remains, arguing that such deposits on the moon would desecrate sacred space. (That spacecraft, however, failed midflight.)

Ms. Boyle’s new book, “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are,” traces the closely intertwined relationship among the moon, Earth, and humanity. In an interview with the Monitor, Ms. Boyle explores lunar stewardship, moon mining, and the case for returning people to the pearly satellite. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

We may soon see the first private-mission moon landing. What are your hopes, or concerns, tied to this new era in space? 

I hope that the next lander succeeds. ... I also hope that people are more aware of what is going on up there. I think the issue with the cremated human remains just shows that there wasn’t a lot of awareness around this whole program.

I’ve written about this for years, but I write about it in science magazines. It doesn’t get as much attention, I think, from the mainstream, non-scientific-minded press. And I think it should. It’s the moon! 

What do you see as the most compelling argument for the United States to return humans to the moon, possibly by 2026? 

I think it would be a good thing, overall, for humanity. I think it would be amazing for this country, again, to send people up there. I think there’s always value in exploring, and learning something new, and just trying to transcend our limits as a human species.

I also think there’s a lot of value in being up there for science. ... There’s nothing that can substitute for a human pilot, and a human set of eyes, and human hands picking something up and considering it, and deciding this rock over that one. I think that’s just invaluable when you’re talking about bringing samples home.

Randall Kahn/Penguin Random House

Rebecca Boyle is the author of the new book "Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are."

I really hope we do go back. I think that when we do, we just need to be thoughtful about who we’re doing it for, what we represent. If you think about Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong’s plaque on Apollo 11 ... it says, “We came in peace for all mankind.” If you put that in the context of the Cold War, which is when this happened, that’s a really extraordinary thing to have said.

I think that’s how we should consider this whole project going forward: that it’s for everyone. The moon belongs to everyone, which means it belongs to no one. 

How do you think we should care for the moon? 

We need to be thoughtful about what we do to it, the way we hopefully are thoughtful about how we treat this planet. You hear a lot more lately – I think I hear a lot more – the phrase “be a good ancestor.” A lot of this is in the climate movement context of stewarding the Earth and stewarding our natural environment for people who are going to be here after us. 

I think we really need to extend that point of view to the moon. ... There’s a lot of excitement and there’s a lot of interest in making money or creating a new lunar economy of some kind. I think there maybe is less discussion about how that should look, or who should get to have a part in that, or who should get to have a say. 

You wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, “Anything we do to it will last forever.” Are you concerned about physical changes to the moon?

Yeah, I mean, because there is no erasure of anything we put up there or that we do up there. The Apollo landers and the Apollo rovers are still sitting on the lunar surface and have been probably bombarded by micrometeoroids, space dust flying around, definitely bombarded by radiation from the sun and cosmic sources. But they’re not going anywhere. There’s no wind. There’s no rain to wash it away. ... I feel like in this headlong new space race that we’re experiencing, maybe people aren’t being as thoughtful about those things as they could be. 

Who’s responsible for raising these discussions – NASA, the press, other stakeholders? 

All of the above. NASA is a very powerful institution in terms of how people feel about the entire Earth and the entire space environment. I don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, I just think there needs to be a broader consideration. ... There’s international bodies that can be more proactive. 

I think NASA’s trying – the new Artemis Accords [are] like a version of a space treaty, essentially. That confirms the existing Outer Space Treaty, which is from 1967, but introduces a few new concepts and ways of working together. ... There’s not like an international body in charge here. There’s really no one in charge. 

How far away are we from mining moon water? 

That’s one of the stated goals of the entire Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and of NASA, generally – they really hope CLPS fosters the development of new companies that will go up there and do stuff like that, and extract things like lunar water.

They’re launching another rover [potentially in late 2024, whose] entire purpose is to look for water, and it’s going to the south pole. That’s where there probably is some level of abundance of water stored in either hydrated minerals or maybe in some sort of deposit under the surface that people could access and, in theory, use – either for human use, but more likely for things like rocket fuel.