Sunday, February 28, 2016

Big Picture Science for Monday February 29, 2016 - The Crater Good












Big Picture Science - The Crater Good

It was “one giant leap for mankind,” but the next step forward may require going back.  Yes, back to the moon.  Only this time the hardware may come from China.  Or perhaps Europe.  In fact, it seems that the only developed nation not going lunar is the U.S.

Find out why our pockmarked satellite is such hot real estate, and whether it has the raw materials we’d need to colonize it.  A new theory of how the moon formed may tell us what’s below its dusty surface.

But – before packing your bags – you’ll want to skim Article IX of the U.N. treaty on planetary protection.  We can’t go contaminating any old planetary body, can we?

Guests:
  • James Oberg - Former Space Shuttle Mission Control engineer and space policy expert
  • Clive Neal - Geologist, University of Notre Dame
  • Edward Young - Cosmochemist, geochemist, UCLA
  • Margaret Race - Biologist and research scientist at the SETI Institute
Download podcast at: http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/crater-good

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

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