It’s been 50 years since Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind by becoming the first person to set foot on the lunar surface. While the historic event was followed by six further crewed missions – five of which landed – nobody has been back to the moon since the astronauts of Apollo 17 bid their goodbyes in 1972.
A growing number of countries and private companies have since started exploring the moon with robotic spacecraft and landers, with China recently becoming the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon. These players are now in a new space race to put people back on the moon in the next few years. But who will be first and where will it all take us?
These are some of the questions being explored in To the moon and beyond – a five part global series created by the different editions of The Conversation around the world and which we will be running on our Anthill podcast channel. To the moon and beyond is hosted by Miriam Frankel, The Conversation UK’s science editor, and Martin Archer, a space plasma physicist at Queen Mary, University of London.
The series will investigate the past 50 years of space exploration and the 50 years ahead of us by talking to academic experts across the world, ranging from space scientists and psychologists to historians, lawyers and futurists.
Click here to subscribe to the To the moon and beyond podcast series
Starting in 1969, it features an astronaut-turned-academic talking about what it must have been like for Armstrong to take that first small step. And we find out from historians why we suddenly stopped sending people to the moon in 1972. We’ll also discover what impact the moon landings have had on humanity and why they have generated so many conspiracy theories.
We’ll then travel all the way to 2069, looking at plans to use the moon as a staging post for future space exploration. This could take humans as far as Mars and the habitable icy moons surrounding the gas giant planets.
You can listen on The Conversation website, or subscribe directly to To the moon and beyond wherever you get your podcasts from. But we’ll also be running each of the five episodes through The Anthill’s channel too.
Credits:
To the moon and beyond is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Sound editing by Siva Thangarajah. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios.
Picture source: Buzz Aldrin on the moon, NASA
Music: Even when we fall by Philipp Weigl, via Free Music Archive
News archive: China lands a rover on the far side of the moon, CBS News