Is a moon village the next step for space exploration?

What he does have in mind is the future of human space exploration. In a decade or so, the International Space Station will be done with. The $150bn outpost will plunge back to Earth in a fireball above the Pacific Ocean leaving astronauts with nowhere to go. If humans want to maintain a presence in space, they need a new plan, and soon.

While Nasa remains fixated on sending people to Mars - a challenge of daunting technical difficulty - ESA under Woerner sees the moon as the obvious next venture for a long time to come. The “village” he has in mind is a diverse community of public and private organisations that work on the moon together. A band of nations might build a telescope on the far side of the moon, where observations are shielded from Earth’s electromagnetic din. A single agency could test whether robots can make radiation-proof habitats from lunar regolith. A tech firm could extract water from polar ice and turn some into hydrogen, oxygen and rocket fuel. Another might break into lunar tourism.

Unlike a single, all-consuming and costly mission, the moon village is intended to grow incrementally as an open, international effort. In time, Woerner says, it would build up the vital infrastructure and practical know-how that humans will need to head more safely into the farther reaches of the solar system. Woerner has kicked the idea around for a while, but will raise it formally with ESA’s ministerial council for the first time later this year. “It’s an inspiring concept, and if others have a better idea, I am ready to change my mind. But so far I can tell you that the moon village is my favourite solution for the future,” he told the Guardian. “The moon is the next logical stepping stone.”

He has plenty of support. “The question is what to do after the space station,’ says Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck, University of London. “Either nothing follows and you shut down human space exploration, or you build another space station – and it’s hard to see the point of that – or you go somewhere else, and I strongly believe the moon is the next place to go.”

It is more a necessity than a desire, Crawford says. Before we head to Mars – or any other faraway body – humans must learn how to thrive in dusty, high radiation environments. “To send people to Mars you have to be very confident in all aspects of the technology,” he says. “Going to the moon is risky too, but the advantage of learning and trialling all this stuff on the moon is that if something goes wrong, you can bring people back. The moon is only three days away. Abort options exist.”

The moon itself is a laboratory. An archive of solar system history, the signatures of meteorites, comets and the solar wind are written in the dust. A moon village would give scientists the means to explore the body, a lump of the ancient Earth, much as Antarctic bases have opened up the southern continent.

The moon village has plenty of parallels with polar outposts. The US McMurdo research centre on the tip of Ross Island began as a handful of buildings in the 1950s. It has now grown to more than 100 structures and a population of 1000 in the summer months. The settlement has an airport, a water distillation plant, sewers and a waste management centre, all needed to support the dormitories, clubs and research facilities. Scientists at the base make space weather observations, study microbes that thrive under glaciers, drill ice cores to obtain 100,000 year records of Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gas levels, and send out robotic submarines to map the underneath of sea ice.

Next year, the US company Moon Express hopes to land the first commercial spacecraft on the moon. The polar regions are thought to harbour vast reserves of ice that can be melted into water, split into hydrogen and oxygen, and turned into rocket fuel. Bob Richards, a co-founder of the company, has called the moon a “gas station in the sky”. Naveen Jain, the chairman, told the Guardian it is time entrepreneurs had the chance to show what they can do there. “If ESA wants to enable private enterprises to do what they do best, then I absolutely support it,” he said.

The prospect of turning the moon into a mine may not please everyone, and Crawford says that international legislation around the resources should be strengthened. But he sees no moral objection to mining. “The reason we have qualms about it on Earth is we are damaging the habitats of other living things we share the planet with. The moon is essentially a dead rock, and it must be preferable to exploit bodies that don’t have any indigenous life on them.”

Under George W. Bush, Nasa planned to return to the moon and build a permanent polar base. But the plan was shelved by Barack Obama, who explained his decision with a blunt “we’ve been there before.” Even after the Apollo missions, the idea that Nasa has been there and done the moon is nothing but “the most superficial geopolitical soundbite,” says Crawford.

Jeff Hoffman, a former Nasa astronaut, believes humans need to go back to the moon as soon as possible. “It has been nearly 50 years since we explored a planetary surface and we need to get some experience. The problem with a ‘moon village’ would be if the infrastructure is so costly to build and maintain that resources for Mars get sucked up,” he says. “Plans for lunar exploration need to be done in a way to enhance our ability to get to Mars, not handicap it.”

Katherine Joy, a lunar scientist at Manchester University, says that while an international consensus is supposed to exist in the form of the Global Exploration Roadmap, a clear plan is still needed. “A pathway needs to be decided soon,” she says. “That is the strength of the moon village concept. It provides an ambitious vision that can bring people together.” “A lunar base isn’t a distraction from our desire to visit and explore Mars,” she adds. “What we learned from Apollo is that touch-and-go-style missions are exciting, and scientifically rewarding, but they don’t lead to a sustained human presence on a different world.”

Exploration and learning how to survive on an alien world is only part of the space game. For decades, missions in Earth orbit and out into the solar system have bound countries together. The International Space Station operates only because Americans, Russians, Europeans and others work side-by-side and trust each other. As Britain prepares to leave the EU, the moon village might do for Europe what politicians could not, Woerner believes. “Space has the power to join forces in Europe - and even beyond Europe,” he says. “We should use it for the sake of humankind.”

Ian Sample