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05/08/2017 – Ephemeris – Europe and the Chinese are talking about a joint Moon village

May 8, 2017 2 comments

Ephemeris for Monday, May 8th.  The Sun rises at 6:22.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 8:55.  The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:07 tomorrow morning.

NASA, so far has no plans to return to the Moon to set up a base in preparation to heading out to Mars or an asteroid.  That could change.  The United States has a problem with long-term goals and planning with a change in administration every 4 or 8 years.  The European Space Agency, and the China National Space Administration have no such problem.  And it seems that these two entities are talking about together creating a Moon Village.  The raw resource that they may hope to mine is Helium 3, which can be used in earthly fusion reactors to produce power.  Helium 3 comes via the solar wind from the Sun.  A base could be setup at the south pole of the Moon, which has virtually no axial tilt to receive perpetual sunlight for power and water from eternally shadowed crater bottoms.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Moon base

Artist visualization of a near polar moon base. Credits: ESA/Foster + Partners via Universe Today

I got this story from Universe Today:  https://www.universetoday.com/135270/europe-china-discuss-moonbase-partnership/