Scientists aren’t the only ones excited about new bootprints in the lunar dust. During a special session commemorating the success of Apollo 17, former NASA Flight Director Gerry Griffin described how the mission’s flight directors gathered in Mission Control as the capsule sped back to Earth. With humanity’s last planned Moon landing complete, they expected astronauts to be on Mars within 20 years. Obviously, that didn’t happen. As a result, NASA’s expertise in planetary surface exploration has been lost over time. "A return to the Moon," Griffin says, "will allow us to get our ‘deep space mojo’ back before a return to Mars." Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, who routinely contributes to sessions at LPSC by offering his first-hand insights into lunar geology, agreed. "The Moon allows us to practice for Mars while doing valuable science."

Preparing for a new era of lunar exploration

"Destination: Moon" is all well and good, but how do we prepare astronauts to be as effective as possible when they finally touch down on the dusty surface? The answer is, not surprisingly, practice!

Just as the Moon will be an excellent training ground for Mars, extreme environments here on Earth are great places to test out hardware and techniques for exploring other worlds. Analogs are environments simulating various aspects of spaceflight. NASA uses extreme environments like the seafloor, remote caves, or the windblown ice sheets of Antarctica as analogs for life in space. In these environments, astronauts and ground teams learn both operational and technological lessons that enable more productive exploration of planetary surfaces.

Operational lessons relate to the way spaceflight is managed. How should astronauts prioritize their time? What’s the best way for scientists on Earth to communicate their needs to a crew in space? When a decision must be made, which mission goals are most important? During analog missions in an environment similar to spaceflight, astronauts learn to answer these questions while investigating an area of genuine scientific interest or testing out new technology for exploring planetary surfaces. One such operational analog is the European Space Agency’s CAVES program (LPSC Abstract 1458; CAVES being a wonderfully reverse-engineered acronym for "Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behavior and performance Skills"), which prepares astronauts for planetary surface exploration by setting them loose to explore a network of caves in Sardinia, Italy. After several days of skills training, the program culminates in a multi-day underground excursion during which the astronauts explore the caves independently, putting their scientific exploration skills to the test.

According to CAVES instructor Francesco Sauro, the expeditions are already revealing useful tricks that will lead to more fruitful exploration of the Moon (and eventually Mars). For example, it turned out that astronaut crews were able to conduct better, faster exploration when they were given daily objectives but not a precise schedule; greater flexibility resulted in greater scientific return. The program also emphasized the value of mixed teams. Mauro explains that different astronaut personality types complement each other during independent exploration: in general, pilot astronauts focus on safety and planning, but can get carried away exploring without documenting their findings; Scientist-astronauts focus on the measurements, but can get hyper-focused on a single, interesting area and lose track of time.