NASA continues with its plans to fly astronauts to the Moon in 2024 with the so-called Artemis mission, which would be the first human-crewed mission to reach the lunar surface since the Apollo era. But there’s something that some people may not be very aware of – Hubble Space Telescope has an essential role for NASA’s upcoming Artemis mission. The US space agency just released a video explaining the significance of the world’s most famous space telescope.

As highlighted in the before-mentioned video, back in 2005, Hubble Space Telescope helped Dr. Jim Garvin and his team of scientists study the surface of the Moon to study lunar resources that could be mined and used by the future lunar colonists to live on our planet’s satellite. To showcase the importance of Hubble, Jim Garvin said that “Hubble’s one little piece of that masterpiece we’ve been working on for 50 years, so that people can use the Moon as a special place, as Mother Nature’s great control experiment next door.”

Hubble Space Telescope and its essential role in NASA’s 2024 Artemis mission to the Moon

Hubble Space Telescope launched to the Earth’s orbit back in 1990, and it helped astronomers observe and study the Universe. Besides examining distant stars and galaxies, Hubble significantly contributed to exploring the Moon and its resources. The lunar exploration research conducted by Jim Garvin paved the road to some upcoming missions, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that would, at its turn, help humans return to the Moon in 2024 with NASA’s Artemis mission.

“We realized that some of the Moon rocks might be resources, and if they found them on Earth, we’d be mining them. So using the eyes of Hubble Space Telescope where it has exquisite precision and resolution […] was an opportunity to use an astronomical asset, a historical one, a cathedral to the stars to observe the Moon in a way where we could test, prospect for these resources in three places […] Hubble became a resource prospector to light the way for following missions, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to fill in the gaps, to paint the picture of the Moon that we’re going to go back to,” said Jim Garvin in the video above.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Paul R. Morris (USRA): Lead Producer