The project, Lunar Mission One, aims to raise £500m for the project from donations by the public
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With an aim to use robotic technology to understand the origins and evolution of the moon and the Earth, a British group has decided to send an unmanned robotic landing module to the South Pole of the Moon – an area unexplored by previous moon missions.
The group, Lunar Mission One, aims to pave the way for future lunar missions. Its target is to raise £500m for the project from donations by the public. The mission claims to be the second most ambitious project after the Apollo landings.
The mission will use drill down to a depth of a least 20 metre, 10 times deeper than any mission has ever drilled and potentially as deep as 100m. By doing this, the mission claims, to access lunar rock dating back up to 4.5 billion years to discover the geological composition of the moon and the relationship it shares with other planets.
Ian Crawford of department of earth and planetary science, Birkbeck college, University of London was quoted by the official website of the mission as saying, “Lunar Mission One will be the first mission to land and drill at a lunar pole. This is a brilliant idea and is tremendously exciting, because until now we have not explored the lunar polar regions.”
The mission aims to improve scientific understanding of the early solar system, the formation of the planet and the conditions that led life on Earth.
The project also wants to launch a global education project that will inspire new generation of children and young people get excited about space, science, engineering and technology. If succeeded, it will also create a comprehensive record of the history of humankind and the biosphere of the Earth.
The mission will be supported by some of the most prominent bodies and institutions in science, education and space, including technical advisors, RAL Space (who were most recently involved in developing instrumentation for the Rosetta Philae Lander).
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