For roughly 4.5 billion years, the Moon has kept Earth company. In the much shorter span of time that humans have been around, we’ve admired the great silver beacon in the night sky.
The Moon may soon also serve as our launchpad to celestial bodies farther afield in the Solar System. Major space players including the United States, Russia and China all have plans to establish bases on the Moon’s dusty surface within the next ten years. And one of the goals of NASA’s Artemis Moon mission is to enable humans to one day travel to Mars.
