transportation ship, we can bring logistics, and we can dock a lender. these four explorers won't all be cooped up on board for the whole time, though. two will actually be spending a week or two on location — down on the lunar surface. it's a chance to further study the landscape and hopefully find a location for our next giant leap — a permanent moon base. gateway will be there before we put a habitat on the surface. gateway allows us to access any point on the lunar surface. when we went with apollo, we had to pick that spot on the moon and go to it. gateway will give us the opportunity to go down at different locations. the first section of gateway could be launched as early as 2025, with new modules then being added from 2027. a lunar base is admittedly further out and it comes with risk, but also reward. so how do we make that a reality?

to find out, it's time for me to take one small step of my own. oh, wow. i can instantly see the dust kind of kicking up. yeah. it's really fine, isn't it? it leaves the footprints like you'd expect. oh, my gosh. that's brilliant. and this is how moon dust behaves, itjust puffs up like that? it does, yeah. it's so fine. welcome to swamp works... ..the dusty, dirty lab where they work with simulated moon dust. now, the loose soil that covers the lunar surface is called regolith. it's extremely fine, very sharp on a microscopic scale, and it gets everywhere. so when we landed with apollo 11, we didn't know what the surface of the moon exactly was going to be like. you'll notice from some

of the footage, the landing pads are quite huge on the landing legs and the ladder�*s far away from the surface. there was a lot of concern of, how much will this lander sink into the surface? how fluffy is this regolith? the surface is fine and powdery. i can...| can pick it up loosely with my toe. in fact, it's because the eagle lander didn't sink in as much as expected that neil armstrong had to take such a giant leap from the bottom rung of the ladder. today, swamp works is developing robots that can cope with and take advantage of lunar soil. and it will be very useful. see, moon dust is made of materials like silicon dioxide and calcium oxide, which all contain a lot of oxygen. if we could mine the regolith and use chemical processes to extract the oxygen, we could make our own breathable air and our own rocket fuel.

the way space flight exploration has been working right now is imagine you're going on a holiday with yourfamily, you're going on a long road trip, thousands of miles, right? right now, we are bringing a trailer behind us with all the gas, you know, that we need with us, all the fuel, everything that we need comes with us. so we want to change that paradigm. we want to... and one of the biggest things that makes the biggest impact is the fuel, right? if we can source some of that from the moon and eventually from mars, that will allow us to bring more and to go more often. making our own fuel makes regular trips to and from the gateway space station much more viable. now, mining moon dust is called isru... and, because they love an acronym round these parts, the robot to do this will be called the isru pilot excavator, ipex. we had to really reinvent

how you do excavation for doing mining on the moon, and eventually mars. the challenge is the technology we have for mining here on earth relies on a lot of mass and a lot of weight, right? the more steel you put on an excavator, the heavier it becomes and the better it digs. we can't launch something as heavy as we want on a rocket. it's still very expensive, right? so we have to reduce the mass of what we put on rockets. and then when you land it on the moon, it weighs one sixth of what it does here on earth, right? imagine, like, trying to dig as if you were on ice, right? it will just scoot across the surface. the scoop will not engage and you won't be able to collect anything. so the way the robot scoops up the dust is using this thing called a bucket drum. and it's got a kind of spiral in there. and if it turns it one way, it scoops the soil, which gradually works its way towards the middle and stays there. like that. and then when it wants to unload... ..it turns it the other way and it

all comes out again. we put them on opposite ends of the robot and when it excavates, it's using both sets of drums at the same time, but they're digging in opposite directions. so one is pulling it that way and one is pulling it that way... right. ..and pulling itself down to the surface. yeah. one of the main dangers faced by extraterrestrial rovers is getting stuck. so, as an added bonus, ipex's scoops and arms can also help it to get out of a hole or flip it over if it takes a tumble. one of its other defences will keep its cameras free from all that electrostatic dust, which will cling to every part of it. now, just like the fuel situation, we can't take building materials with us to the moon either — we have to make our structures from moon dust. these bricks and blocks and bars have all been made by mixing and melting regolith with plastic. in the future, giant sd printers

will build shelters to protect those living on a world with no atmosphere from radiation, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts, moonquakes and temperatures ranging from +100 to —200 degrees celsius. even replacement parts can be made from regolith. so this is a wheel that has been printed with regolith and polymer. 0k. this is another example of what we can do if we capture the resources from the moon. now, do you know, i've seen and held wheels for rovers before, full—size wheels, and they're really light. right. but this is really heavy. yes, this is the opposite. because those wheels that are light, especially if you're sending it on a rocket, they need to be light because it's expensive. this is heavy because it's made on the moon. and heavy wheels are a good thing, i guess. it's better, right? especially for a digger. like the more weight that we have on the excavator, the better it's going to perform. would you believe you can even make rope out of regolith? this is made from basalt glass — really, really thin fibres, a bit like optic fibre. so you could even make rope out of moon dust. these are hopeful times for space exploration, but it's always been a risky endeavour.

im—i odysseus — lunar lander separation confirmed. this year, we've seen three probes sent to the moon. two made it, and both of those had, shall we say, awkward landings. and the artemis mission to put boots back on the lunar ground has been pushed back to 2026 at the earliest. but nasa says space explorers need to take these setbacks in their stride. i don't see it as a disappointment. it's very cliche to say space is hard, but what we're endeavouring to do is highly complex. we expect challenges along the way so this doesn't surprise us and we're pushing forward. it sounds really expensive to do space exploration. is it, and is it worth it? so, yes, it's really expensive. it was really expensive for us to explore this planet, really expensive to lay rail infrastructure, to lay highway infrastructure, to put the infrastructure in place that allows us to travel in air

traffic around this globe. it's absolutely necessary for us to lay that critical infrastructure for going to space, because what we learn in that endeavour is tremendous. the exponential growth that we've seen in the world in technology is because of great endeavours like this. it's absolutely worth it. here in the united states, every year the general population is spending as much money on potato chips as our budget is every year to go out to the moon. that's a good figure. this has been a fascinating trip to nassau. ——this has been a fascinating trip to nasa. the motivation may be different to that of the space race of the 1960s, but the size of the ambition is just as great today, as we shoot for the moon once again.

hello again. friday was a day of sunny spells and passing showers, as those shower clouds started to collapse down late in the day, we had some pretty still conditions there in the highlands. temperatures in scotland, northern ireland and wales generally quite close to average, but across large parts of england, in contrast, it was very mild, 17 degrees in east anglia, six above average for the time of year. now the showery conditions on friday were caused by this area of low pressure that's working out of the way now. it will be bringing some heavy snow to parts of sweden and norway into saturday. get a quiet ridge of high pressure, a weather window, if you like, ahead of the next system that's working in off the atlantic. what all that means is over the next few hours, increasingly, the skies will tend to clear. and what that means is we'll see temperatures drop like a stone. and heading into the first part of saturday morning, there'll be quite a widespread

frost, scotland, northern ireland, parts of northern england as well. a chilly start to the day then, but a lovely sunny morning through most of the uk on saturday. however, rain will quickly spread into northern ireland along with some strengthening winds, and we'll see some splashes of rain getting into wales and south west england. the rain probably not too heavy here through the course of the morning. across eastern england, eastern areas of scotland after that sunny but chilly start to the day, ok, the weather will tend to turn a bit cloudier, but it should stay dry until after dark, really. temperatures 10—14 celsius. now for the second half of the weekend, we've got a band of rain that's going to come through saturday night. the dregs of that still around across eastern england as we start the day on sunday. following that, we'll have south—westerly winds bringing mild air across the uk, and we'll be looking at some showery conditions moving back in. so, sunday weather—wise we start off with rain across east anglia, south east england. that clears away. sunny spells follow widely, but there will be some scattered showers, some of them turning quite

heavy through the course of the afternoon. the south—westerly winds drudging up some mild air across all parts of the country. temperatures about 13 celsius in glasgow and belfast, but up to around 15—16 celsius in the warmest parts of england. beyond that, southerly winds are going to kind of dominate into the early part of the new week. however, with low pressure never far away, there will be some showers or longer spells of rain affecting western areas at times. however, it does stay mild, 13 celsius, the top temperature in edinburgh through monday and tuesday, and it stays mild, really, through the week in london with highs of around 16 celsius or so.

live from washington, this is bbc news. arrests for vandalism at polling stations, as some russians protesst the presidential vote that's all but guaranteed to give vladmir putin another term. the white house and israel strike different tones on hopes

for a truce in gaza, after hamas gave what it called a "comprehensive vision" to mediators. the bbc gains special access inside haiti, as the country grapples with violence and political chaos. we'll have the latest. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. thanks forjoining us. another six years in power is almost all but certain for russia's vladimir putin, as the country is in the midst of voting to choose its president. mr putin faces no serious opposition — with his rivals dead, in prison, or in exile. acts of protest have taken place across russia, including incidents involving dye being poured into ballot boxes and fireworks being set off at the polls. yulia navalnaya — the widow of putin's most vocal, late critic, alexei navalny — has called on kremlin opponents to go en masse to the polls at noon on sunday to protest the election. she's urged the west not to recognise what will be putin's fifth term as president. our russia editor

steve rosenberg, is in moscow with more.