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the moon has been earth's constant companion for 4 and a half 1000000000 years. now it's finally back in the focus of science almost 50 years after man last set foot on the moon. has more people at the center the total people on this earth that were not alive when though we had a last minute landing it's been that way all day and we haven't done the next day and some people say been there done that but what we haven't done is to just touch the ground and if i can left it right we haven't really lived we haven't explored surely if you want to commit the money to it like we did on apollo you could do it in probably 10 years easy we did a great years and 2 months. now scientists are concentrating on ways to grow food produce energy and make sure. they're.

all over the world researchers are working on a return to the moon and the chance to be able to stay there longer. we have to use the moon to operationally understand. how to live in board on phantom fully there are many ideas but actually putting them in the practice is the final step that's missing will be great to see the humans return to the moment. when this will happen is not yet clear but science is making it possible to survive on the moon.

on this wednesday in 1969 the world was holding its breath mankind was witnessing a historic mission. bond board apollo 11 astronauts neil armstrong michael collins and edwin buzz aldrin had a goal mankind had not yet reached to fly to the moon 5 days later in the early morning of july 21st neil armstrong uttered his unforgettable words. or their prayer. for. her. armstrong and aldrin spent a total of 2 and a half hours on the surface of the moon as they collected rock samples and raised the american flag they were watched live by $600000000.00 people. only

a few of them were aware that the successful moon landing was hanging by a thread in that says mission control center in houston cap com charlie duke had direct radio contact with neil armstrong. now 82 years old he can still recall the dramatic moments. we get very very tight on fuel i call 60 seconds which many as 60 seconds to land i call 30 seconds the tension is rising in mission control you could hear a pin drop and we were holding our breath will we make it i called 30 seconds and then 13 psycho's later he landed but it was very very tight. and very close to abort. yet the 1st lunar landing was a success. 3 years later charlie duke got his own entry in the annals of space travel. dan yergin i were the 5th landing on the

moon by can april 19th 72 and i was the 10th man to step all of them and once we laid it i just erupted with enthusiasm i shouted into the end of my we had our helmet solid and fully suited up an idea shouted in my own but houston orion is finally here he's fantastic. why are you own. in the surface of the moon charlie and his commander john young carried out experiments for example on radiation protection and. it was also it was beautiful one of most beautiful deserts i've ever seen great a very rough topography up and down heli craters rocks hills everywhere and. our objective was explore this valley so ahead i was excited

was very happy to be there you were almost overcome with the thought of a moment in the morning. on april 24th 1972 they lifted off again. only one further apollo mission followed half a year later. i'm very disappointed that we haven't had somebody go back. that that. that would be a big strain way. optimistic about going back for them or we need to build up of station all of them or several of the at article where we have

a science station or antarctica and that's very hostile climate in at our record but we do it and i think we could do the same thing on the moon. and article is the earth's most extreme continent nowhere else is it this cold with temperatures of minus 90 degrees celsius being measured here. 98 percent of the mainland is covered by ice that's 3 quarters of the earth's fresh water reserves in the surface is one and a half times the size of europe and twice as large during the antarctic winter. and . only a few animals can survive here and several types of penguin such as the emperor penguin have adapted to the hostile environment as have

a few types of seals in. the conditions here in the eternal ice resemble the barrenness of the moon most closely. which is why a team of researchers from braman have made the long journey to the far south the 14 members of the german alice space center d.l.r. will spend 2 months at the research station new mine a 3. since 2009 scientists have been conducting research here with different focuses such as need your own geology and atmospheric chemistry the architecture of the neumeyer 3 station has been adapted to the environmental conditions of the antarctic. it's built on stilts to keep it free of snow drifts up to 60 scientists stay here in the

antarctic summer between november and february. aerospace engineer powered sabah is the only member of his team who will also spend the winter here his task is to grow fresh vegetables as part of the even i.s.o.'s project. with activists here. the idea is to try out all the necessary technology and operational procedures here in the antarctic so that in future our greenhouse can also work in space jobs are from famous ones we're growing between 15 and 20 different species of plant that's $100.00 large we also have little strawberry plants goldberger get them to flower so we can harvest strawberries in a few months. because. until the mobile greenhouse reaches the antarctic by ship the team has to take good care of the delicate strawberry plants. inside the station danya sure but. have tried to create the most ideal conditions.

strawberries are difficult to cultivate and that's why we've been provided and built our own little makeshift greenhouse. of course it's not optimal but we don't have much of an alternative if we want to keep the strawberry plants alive. it will take at least a few more days for the greenhouse to arrive then the experiment here can really get going and soon on the moon. in order to live and work on the moon for a longer period of time worldwide research has to consider the conditions there and the differences to planet earth. 71 percent of the earth is covered in water it has an atmosphere a layer of air and gases that surrounded and protected for example from meteorite

impact and damage from various types of radiation it also ensures that temperature swings are moderate. 400000 kilometers away things look rather different on the moon water would have to be extracted from lunar sand by evaporating and condensing it the moon has no atmosphere to protect it from the impact of any flying object. it is also exposed to dangerous cosmic radiation. temperatures rise and fall so dramatically that humans could not easily survive. to make that possible in the future international students of the european space agency are conducting research with various experiments at the european training center for astronauts in cologne dr aden cowley is in charge of the space ship project.

outside the center of a lunar station will be built for test and research purposes. so you're looking at is a foundation at the moment for the next few months this is going to rapidly changing to a building where we're going to have a large 34 meter diameter dome we're going to have $700.00 tons of regolith simulant lego has to pay money to tell you find on the newer surface. a small settlement for now in cologne but in the not too distant future one on the moon 2. this is how the scientists imagine it will look. inside there's an airlock and a technical area the main room is provided with daylight like in the i s s the oxygen supply is provided by chemically based air preparation and there are good example of why we should go back to the moon will be to understand the radiation environment so if you're in orbit at the moment you have might be the sphere of earth protecting used to a certain degree but the minute you move beyond this you go to dinner varmints you

no longer have that protection and now you've got an entirely new radiation environment that have a different effect on humans. the lunar habitat will protect humans from this radiation with the strong outer layer sister protective layer that we want to build so the idea is that we take material that is already on the moon and by applying the microwaves we could put it around their habitat and build like solid structure that will protect their habitat from the metro it's the radiations and so on. student oriented garcia from france is producing the heat required to sinter the powdery regulus baking it into a hard layer. at the moment however it looks more like pebbles than a flat surface. on the moon special robot vehicles would spread the lunar sand and sinter at the same time which would take

about 3 months. back then the apollo astronauts didn't have such a protected building. well in a little 3 days it was a bad you could survive with just the regular. protection that we had it took about 40 years for the scientists to figure out what the apollo missions really brought back the takes that long you have to develop the the the instruments to be sensitive enough to learn what these stones you know 300 kilos almost 400 kilos of stones that have been brought back from the moon what they really tell us. in the near. neutron apollo astronauts were not allowed to keep any souvenirs the original lunar regolith was simply too valuable.

just a stone's throw away from the research center in cologne is the d.l.r. institute for solar research shows here 2 scientists are researching regolith radiation protection professor matty espalier and his team seek the most moon like conditions possible in our own making and often what's available in abundance on the moon is moon dust and plenty of radiation from the sun we would need several meters of moon rock or moon dust as protection from radiation from the sun and other cosmic sources. and that's one of the things that we're researching this is i stepping into if you have a proof. the experiment is called regel light a word coined to combine regolith and light. of course it doesn't use real lunar regolith but it's simulant which has similar properties and will be centered to an entire brick using layered 3 d.

printing. what we want to show is that we can really produce a 3 d. object whether x. y. or z. in a vacuum and this is the technology we're developing here because. there is a vacuum on the surface of the mood to simulate this made under fatality and alexandre the mill this from france are creating the experiment in a vacuum chamber on so that's. our objective is to see what mechanical properties are if we sin to something in a vacuum. there's something better comes out can we construct a better building with it or not see. the strong xenon beams imitate the sun and can create a constant heat of around 1100 degrees celsius channeled into one ray they hit the 3 levels of moving moon sand below. it can take up to 5

hours under lunar conditions to bake a 3 dimensional object such as a brick. we want to see whether anything comes out of the vacuum and then do the chemical analysis but the chamber is too small a battery hoshi can was not supply but if is when we have a big we can build a better cooling system bigger components cooling system doll flown on course the. scientists have to find the right parameters so that in future today's results will look like the brick sintered without a vacuum. as a last step they have to replace the artificial light with their solar furnace which consists of $159.00 square mirrors and concentrates the light energy. it produces the necessary heat through constant sun radiation as exists on the moon.

you have to make use of every resource you have and so i think 3 printing structures for habitate for habitations you know all these things that we can do now with existing infrastructure existing materials on the surface will be something want to take advantage of. back to the antarctic the conditions can change unpredictably with the possibility of wind speeds of up to 60 knots that's hurricane force. the weather here is the deciding factor it's exactly the right testing ground for the scientists with the perfect conditions for their research. young doctors are still up to lead and arctic is the most remote continent of the world it's not easy to reach you mentioned the people living here are dependent on the technology which keeps them alive just like in

a space mission so it's the best place to test the whole operation of the greenhouse and in the twit disk of x. holes up. almost everything is prepared for their project even i assess where they're planning to grow vegetables and strawberries in a mobile greenhouse this platform has been standing here for a while 400 meters away from the german research station neumeier 3 of the mobile greenhouse should have arrived here days ago but the cargo boat transporting it to the site is making slow headway through the thick pack ice. 14000 kilometers away in germany moon research is also being. read out various experiments for the project spaceship are being carried out at the european astronaut training center in cologne. belgian students under cool is working on a virtual environment where future visitors to the moon can train. simulation like

this we can train them into virtual reality as if they were already on the lunar base and then have them. interact with the digital rights and can completely be able to do the experiment before and instead of just being in the training room with their backing for. the virtual moonscape is still in the development phase at some point however it could help with the preparation of future missions. a few rooms away colleague may care to think you do is busy working with different devices his specialist area is 3 d. printing. this is 3 d. printer it works with polymer and. stick behind and basically it warms it up in here and then it melts and when it melts you can

put it over surface it gets cold so it's good to stick to the to the bed and you can break. 'd and then layer by layer and make it through the object. heating melting printing but for the next step we can't is particularly interested in the reuse ability of the plastic what we're doing is here check if the materials work properly in the morning. after worth by sickly we will check with our piece if we crash it and then we re extruded with this machine again. painted again if it was the same as the. object before. the coral containing the plastic would of course have to be much larger when it is transported to the moon but once it's there the plastic could always be really used. in bordeaux france the 3 d. printing process is being researched in a parabolic flight. professor yes good stuff from the i am in berlin the german

federal materials testing institute has developed equipment with his team to enable parts such as tools to be made from metal powder in 0 gravity. do you. have the experiment is to try out a new process of sucking in powder and then trying to fix it and is 0 gravity environment so in principle you can produce parts on demand the part which has been centered with a laser on to those plates should be able to be taken out and it's ready for use. of. the for each flight the scientists draw their conclusions from the previous flight making minor adjustments to try and improve the results of their experiment . so this is our 3rd flight day last time we switched the material and this time we have adjusted the parameters of the equipment to be able to apply the layer of powder i'd say we managed to get about 70 percent of the powder on to the

layer and the rest by the way we need to improve that we can't have the powder flying around. i know berlin research team is just one of many in total the participants here in bado fly for 4 hours on each of 3 days. there are 31 parabolas pers light. the aircraft rises steeply upwards from its horizontal position. reduces the thrust of the turbines and flies for around 22 seconds and 0 gravity. that is a particular challenge for the scientists as the gravitational force during a parabolic flight varies. they've adapted the structure of their experiment accordingly. the experimental apparatus looks like this. the metal powder is in

a container at the beginning of the parabolic flight from there it spread in a layer over the base plate. so that it doesn't fly away in 0 gravity it's sucked in by gas from below and kept on the base plate also during the 0 gravity. then a laser melts the relevant information onto the freshly applied powder it melts the loose metal powder into a compact structure this is done with every layer producing a 3 dimensional object in this case a spanner. a good step and his team can follow this process which is repeated several times via the installed web cams. the final results can be seen a little later in the laboratory. the metal powder has really been transformed into

2 small spanners. the experiment by ginsters research group was a success. in the not too distant future all tools could be produced this way in space. in the antarctic the long wait is over the cargo ship has to from south africa has managed to break through the ice and the unloading can finally take place. after a 10 day delay the german scientists watch their mobile greenhouse being unloaded from the ship. unloading on the ice has its hazards. although the area around the ship is frozen the layer of ice is thinner then further inland. the whole process takes around 90 minutes in the end only as well and the squad sets off back to base.

it's 23 kilometers away from the unloading point to new my are 3. although there is no darkness in the antarctic summer as the sun never goes down they still have a regulated 8 hour working day and this day ends with a long awaited arrival of the container at the station. the next day begins early and it's time to build the green house the scientists have a whole freight container full of equipment which they have to unpack and inspect after such a long journey. at the same time the mobile greenhouse is assembled. it's made up of 26 metre long containers and is precision lifted by crane onto the platform once this task has been completed the eden i s s project can really get

going. looking inside the container we can see how the antarctic greenhouse works in detail. the 1st part contains the services sector where all the technical systems such as air and heat management are monitored and controlled. the 2nd part contains herbs vegetables and lettuces which can also pollinates with the help of ventilation. the technology which allows them to grow is called. instead of transporting heavy soil into space the roots of the plant are sprayed with the water nutrients solution ele deal lamps containing the right color. composition by then mounted above to sunlight. complex water and air cleaning systems a complete and independent and sustainable ecosystem. but. people think that the plants are only for us to eat but there are other reasons we take the

plants with provide us with oxygen to breathe they need the carbon dioxide that we humans breathe out it's a perfect symbiosis. for days after the arrival of the container everything is installed to start up operations. almost 2 weeks later than planned the german scientists can finally start sowing the seeds of course the long nurtured strawberry plant has top priority. as carefully as if they were performing surgery. take care of the sensitive plant. after bathing it in water the strawberry plant is put into its new home using mineral wool and a plastic holder. the researchers are optimistic that most of the plants will thrive. but they're

a bit concerned about the diva of their crops the strawberry plant. that. if you go on long term missions such as the one to the moon you can use strawberries as an incentive food just to keep the isolated team in good mental shape. this experiment works here in the antarctic we're pretty confident that the whole thing will work on the moon too. but on the moon the conditions are more difficult and unpredictable. although the container could stand without being further secured due to the moon's reduced gravity the parts of the autonomous system still have to be transported there yet there's one key component missing on the moon which is guaranteed here by the connection to the neumeyer 3 station electricity.

in edinburgh scotland a team is working on a solution to this problem at the harriet watt university yogo schleppy is researching the topic of solar energy. altamont of course on the moon we can't just plug our devices into sockets and we have to consider what kind of resources are available for producing energy there are no rivers there's no wind on the moon there's no atmosphere if you will what is available is sunlight and it's better than on earth because it is not weakened by the atmosphere and if. you're going schleppy wants to produce mirrors to create energy his experiment is also about how to use lunar regolith. for days off we'll have the materials we've brought with us and there's this basaltic samples but what we can build out of basaltic sand is relatively simple bricks or walls by heating the material or baking what if we can go one step further and produced resulting glass from the materials i just got.

sloppy uses an ordinary microwave oven to make glass from the moon sand simulant. he grinds the molten regolith which is turned into glass as smoothly as possible. so the glass brick still needs a reflective surface. this is made in the final and most complicated part of the mir production process on the moon there is an endless vacuum but here it has to be created artificially. fixes the glass elements which have been produced in recent weeks onto the frame of the vacuum chamber. before he seals it he adds one small piece of aluminum which is heated and then evaporates distributing millions of tiny particles. glasses difference but

the aluminum is the same type we use for normal mirrors it's working pretty good now it's not transparent anymore so we can slowly turn off the system and of the 3 months of. the aluminum which was heated in the vacuum is not only supposed to coat the inside of the vacuum chambers glass dome. it is primarily meant to coat the experimental glass stones. it looks really good the mirrors have turned out really well they should be able to reflect our artificial sunlight well. that's what matters at the end of his experiment it will only be a success if the mirror is made of moons and can also harness energy from light. to test it the researcher has built his own construction his homemade mirrors have to

pass the comparison test. diffidence place so here we have a reference surface which reflects sunlight or rather the artificial light we're going to produce from the surface to the lens which is attached to a solar cell the lens concentrates the light on to the solar cell and then we can produce electricity which we can measure at a certain voltage and we can read it here on the meter. with the reference surface mirror we expect to produce about 2 volts. it's $500.00 lights out. so our 2.46 volts that looks good it's working well so near. $2.00 volts are produced with an ordinary mirror surface this is

a reference level for the mirror made of the imitation lunar sand. with the foam from it we're going to find out now whether it will work in the way we imagine. so i come to point to 3 volts that's great we're only losing about 10 percent compared to the reference mirror surface and that's really good for the 1st attempt very successful. so the german scientist has really succeeded in producing energy from lunar regolith and light. you know if we can mine those resources and turn them into mirrors or some other. solar type of energy that that's definitely going to be a way we're going to you know maintain a base or our presence on the moon but the biggest challenge i think for living on the surface of the moon is dealing with the power and dealing with it with the

infrastructure to maintain systems especially during a winter night what's interesting about the moon is almost anywhere on the surface you're going to experience 14 continuous earth days of light fall before taking continuous earth days of night. this day and night rhythm of the moon can be illustrated with the help of a solar cell which would be positioned on the side of the moon that we always see from earth. this phenomenon arises due to so-called synchronous rotation. the moon needs exactly the same time to orbit the earth as it does to rotate on its own axis almost 28 days since it rotates on its own axis this means that the side with the solar cell faces the sun for 14 days during this period the energy production by the solar cell is constantly stable for the other 2 weeks the solar cell is on the shadow side solar energy cannot be produced during the long lunar night. and that

night it's cold dark there's no solar energy to draw from you have to have power that can keep alive during those 14 days so we need a small efficient batteries we need very efficient solar cells if we can develop batteries have a way of 2 weeks for. do all of the things you want to do. during that time then that's the answer. for duke's 3 day trip to the moon and the other equally short apollo missions energy was not a problem a much greater challenge back then was moving around in the bulky space suits. the astronauts only learn to handle it once they breach the moon there are 3 ways to. move around a lot of. generally did i was just a regular was stiff legged walk that you could really get going fast but if i was

going uphill i would kangaroo hop uphill. downhill it same to be better skill one leg in front of the other in a skip down like this so it depended to to me it depended on the terrain who i was on which one i used i think we really need a better space suit to stay on the moon a long time. it's precisely this project the development of a space suit for the moon and mars which is being pursued at the massachusetts institute of technology in boston. professor david neumann is trying to adapt the old spacesuit to the conditions on the moon. because right now the current space suit is $140.00 for space station it was for shuttle so that's ok and

weightlessness but when we get to the moon and mars we're in a gravity environment the moon only has about 17 percent of the earth's gravity allowing large leaps but these can backfire especially in heavy spacesuits. how do i make someone much more like an olympic athlete how do we perform and not use my waist my energy working against the suit but put all that energy into performing so you really have to think about a completely different design the only other way to keep someone alive and put pressure on them is to basically put it right on to the skin so that's called mechanical counterpressure. 'd 'd version of the suit is skin tight exerting pressure on the body and the right pressure within the body this means that human tissue is not stretched and blood doesn't clot it's made of 3 layers layer controls body temperature the middle layer provide stability and flexibility and the outer layer is protective. if the suit tears it can be easily repaired.

the outdoor work on the moon can then continue with current spacesuits a leak could be lethal as the gas it contains to maintain the pressure necessary for human survival could leak out this is what makes it so heavy and hinders the astronaut's movement a major disadvantage compared to mit's version. and working on it for a while for the last 15 years and so far it seems feasible. there moon suit is indeed feasible but whether it will be deployed remains to be seen elsewhere the successful implementation of an experiment is more concrete in the german aerospace center and braman the scientists of the ied niacin s project have been back from the end arctic for a month. minus the one who has to stay and look after the plants in the greenhouse container they ask how things are going off. since the start of the isolation

it's actually been quite nice here at last that on so many people around it's quite pleasant the greenhouse is doing well the plants are growing great we had a few teething problems it 1st but on the whole it's all going pretty well. the antarctic gardener regularly reports via video conference on the development of the plants it's like a home and. it's. been about the strawberries were really sensitive and sadly they didn't make it we had to stop the experiment early we're making a new start with the experiment from scratch. because we don't have seedlings in there anymore we've planted them straight from seed and we think it will be a success. every day since their return scientists have been observing the growth today is harvest day and gardener powered sabah can finally reap the benefits of his week's long work. yes there on 2. you can see

our 1st harvest here on the table months mine shins are larger letters plants are done really well. you've got me plenty of those for the next few days well not really all. the cucumbers are doing pretty well true some of them are really big ones and they're going to be weighed now and then i'll think i'll probably have some of them for dinner tonight usually good. and the other 9 researchers at the new my i 3 station will have fresh vegetables to eat not only today but during their whole isolation period in the antarctic winter even i access project is already a success and the basis for a food supply for future trips to the moon has been created. perfect maybe in a perfect world we could put a moon habitat or at least a greenhouse on the moon within the next 15 to 20 years. but this isn't

a perfect world the necessary research funding for speedy progress is not as easy to come by as it was in times of the apollo missions i don't want just to apollo that's not that's not what our boys are called sustainable long term exploration. 50 years after the 1st moon landing we will probably have to wait a few more years or even decades until the next one but preliminary preparations are underway. but it's just an exciting thought that we as humans are able to get together internationally and managed to build a base and a permanent outpost on the surface of the moon more so than the. return of the moon is certainly there are there are genes. we have been given a quiz that if. at all for it was to go out explore. nobody knows how long it will take until the next lunar mission takes place. but we

do know that in the next few years a lot will revolve around the moon. africa . reeses transit climate protection students from 20 countries involved in a scientific expedition to teach us how to collect samples from to devise the same type in the good sense of the standards just for the prosecution helps them to spread environmental awareness about because. he wants to share that there's a lot that we can eat cold comfort go. 30 minutes on t.w. people.

that this is the world's oldest film festival. supposed that you could do a flat earth. thank you for joining us john because. if you know the hardship of maybe. welcomes the shout. i am. i an. awesome image of a good movie because there's so much to discover which will remain cheeriest we're going to continue to meet for minds.

a deadly plane crash at least 14 people were killed when a passenger jet came down shortly after takeoff from the city of. their own they're . also coming up. more rage in india over controversial citizenship law the death toll reaches 20.