NASA embarked on a “Journey to Mars” about five years ago with the aim of sending humans into orbit around the Red Planet in the 2030s and landings to follow some time later. The current plan calls for activities in lunar orbit, but no landings. Despite this change in course from the existing Moon-then-Mars exploration plan, however, there remains a significant subset of engineers, and especially astronauts, at the space agency who would prefer to use the Moon as a waypoint to the surface of Mars.

They may get their way if Hillary Clinton is elected president. On Monday night, during an event at Rice University in Houston titled Lost in Space, a physicist named Neal Lane offered comments in favor of a return to the Moon. “Today there’s a lot of international interest in having a presence on the Moon,” Lane said. “I think we don’t want to look down from lunar orbit and watch China and India and Europe and other parts of the world starting to establish missions there, even if they’re small ones, while we’re going around and around.”

Lane served as President Clinton’s science advisor from 1998 to 2001. And although it may not be widely known in aerospace circles, Lane is now serving as an informal advisor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign on the topics of science and technology, including space policy. There is no formal space policy yet for a Clinton White House, but it’s likely that Lane would have a meaningful voice in setting that policy after the election if Clinton were to win the presidency.

The former science advisor offered two primary reasons for his view that NASA should refocus on the Moon before setting off deeper into the Solar System. For one, the space agency really doesn’t know enough about living and working for long periods of time in harsh environments, Lane said. The lunar surface would offer such a low-gravity test bed, while also offering the safety of being close to Earth.

Perhaps more importantly, Lane views lunar exploration as a powerful tool of international diplomacy. He noted that NASA’s current partners, including Europe, Japan, Canada, and Russia, have all expressed their interest in returning to the Moon. Such a plan might also open the door to cooperation with China and India.

“We’ve been to the Moon but we didn’t stay very long,” Lane said. “So the US really ought to consider, in my view, leading international expeditions back to the Moon and to other bodies in the Solar System, and perhaps eventually Mars, and work[ing] with other countries to ensure free access to space. I think the new president could find this to be a real opportunity for leadership.”

Canceling Constellation

President Obama ended the Constellation plan in 2010, which called for the construction of a large rocket, the Ares V, and other tools to enable the establishment of lunar outposts. NASA's management had designed the Constellation program, which the agency’s administrator characterized as “Apollo-on-steroids,” with little international cooperation in mind. Instead, NASA was meant to once again demonstrate American superiority, as it had during the Cold War. This made it easier for Obama to reject.

Instead of serving as an example of US exceptionalism, the reality is that NASA is now seen as more of a means of bringing together the international community and allowing the United States to lead by example. A pivot back toward the Moon by the next president would find no shortage of willing partners—the European Space Agency has already proposed the concept of a lunar village. In a world that seems increasingly divided, space could serve as a driver for geopolitical unity.

Moreover, unlike in 2010, NASA can now rely on an increasingly vibrant commercial space sector to help cut costs. Multiple private providers, including United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, have announced large rockets that could support a NASA-led international plan to establish lunar outposts for scientific research as well as the development of resources like subsurface ice. Other private companies, such as Moon Express, are developing business plans to operate on the Moon.

Obama killed Constellation after convening a committee in 2009 that was led by Norm Augustine, which reviewed Constellation and other options for US human spaceflight programs. One of that committee’s members, former astronaut Leroy Chiao, said Monday night, “The Constellation program, frankly, had a lot of funding problems and some pretty serious technical problems. You know it probably was the right thing to do to cancel it. But it didn’t mean we should not go to the Moon.”

Moreover, Chiao suggested the decision to remove the Moon as a possible destination was driven by politics, rather than what might be best for the US space enterprise. “Frankly, it came down to us on the committee to not talk too much about the Moon, because there was no way this administration was going to go there, because it was W’s program,” he said. “Ok, that’s a pretty stupid reason not to go to the Moon. I’m hopeful with this election cycle that maybe the moon will be a possibility again.”

The reality is that, even just a little more than a month before the presidential election, neither of the major party campaigns have articulated space policies. Space simply ranks too low on the list of national priorities to be a part of the presidential conversation. However a new president will invariably review the state of human spaceflight. And in such a calculus, the Moon might prove an inviting target for both scientific and political reasons, especially after the US House of Representatives has already indicated that it favors revisiting NASA’s Journey to Mars and reconsidering the Moon as an interim destination.