Should we send men back to the Moon?: Malcolm Walter argues that our exploration there has barely begun. Image shows the Moon as captured by the NASA probe Galileo.

Credit: NASA

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The spacewalk by Chinese Air Force Colonel, Zhai Zhigang, last weekend, was the latest in a long series of grand gestures with which nations announce their stake in the exploration of space (see, Chinese complete successful spacewalk , Cosmos Online).

In May 1961, President John F Kennedy decreed that, before the decade was up, the U.S. would land men on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. Neil Armstrong took his one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind on 20 July 1969. It was the first of six manned landings.

The Soviet Union countered with 20 robotic missions to the Moon, including several that successfully returned samples to Earth. The Soviets had earlier got off to a flying start when they orbited the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the first dog, Laika, also in 1957, and the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. It was the height of the Cold War.

While a great deal of interesting science was undertaken during that period – and continues using samples collected during the Soviet and U.S. Moon missions – much remains to be done.

We now understand the Moon formed after a Mars-sized object hit the Earth soon after the formation of the Solar System. The history of such impacts helps us understand the origin of the Solar System, and assess the risk of future catastrophic events.

The timing of this latest Chinese space mission, so soon after the Olympics, may not be a coincidence. It is tempting to read into it a message: In space, as in sport, China is a force to be reckoned with. This mission is one of a series designed to lead to the building of a small space station, and ultimately to landing astronauts (known as "taikonauts'' in China) on the Moon.

The plan to return astronauts to the Moon comes at an interesting time. The U.S. program of manned lunar missions was terminated with Apollo 17 in 1972, and the Soviet missions ceased in 1976. After a lull in the exploration of the Solar System as a whole, the program was reinvigorated late last century.

The past 15 years have seen spectacularly successful missions to Mars, and elsewhere. During this period, the European Space Agency (ESA) became a major player for the first time, while the former Soviet Union was relegated to a back seat.

Then in January 2004, out of the blue, President George W Bush surprisingly announced a plan to return Americans to the Moon by 2020, and to use such missions as a stepping-stone for future manned expeditions to Mars, and then beyond. The U.S. space science community was caught napping.

Why go back to the Moon when the scientific rationale for other targets, such as Mars, is much more obvious? Why send astronauts anywhere, when so much can be achieved by robotic missions at less cost and with much less risk to human life?

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