Newswise — With the confirmation of Jim Bridenstine as NASA’s new administrator, one question comes to mind: Will the United States return to the moon?

The confirmation came just one day after the agency launched its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to search our nearest neighboring stars for earth-like planets. The countdown to launch is already on for the InSight mission, which will drop a lander on the surface of Mars to study seismology, heat flow and interior structure of the red planet.

The current administration has also expressed its desire to send American astronauts back to the moon. That’s something Clive Neal, professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame, has been advocating for a long time.

“This is a time of significant commercial and entrepreneurial interest in a return to the moon,” Neal says. “Utilizing the moon opens the door to endless possibilities for space exploration. A fully functioning lunar base that utilizes and produces consumables — oxygen, water, rocket fuel, etc. — would allow for more cost-effective travel and enable a sustainable human Mars exploration program.”

Neal serves on the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, which has assessed seven planned international lunar robotic missions to take place by 2025.

Of those missions, China has planned three landings at the lunar South Pole, while Russia has two planned missions. Japan and the United States each have one mission planned.

Those missions are to test whether the moon’s resources we know exist on the moon – such as water, oxygen and hydrogen – are abundant enough to be used for the long term by future colonies. In order to cultivate such lunar resources, Neal says ways must be found to economically extract, transport and utilize them. “Important relationships between private industry and the science and exploration community are lending to the creation of new opportunities,” he says. “We must first go to the lunar surface and conduct old-fashioned prospecting to understand how widespread the resources are, how deep the deposits are, what form they are in and how easily extractable they are. The results from such missions will be critical for establishing the lunar economy – showing whether business cases will close in terms of commercial mining activities on the moon.”

Neal is an expert in the petrology, geochemistry and geology of the moon. He was chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group from 2006-2010 and again from 2015 until March 2018. He is available to discuss sending astronauts back to the moon and what NASA should focus on as the agency’s new administrator settles in.