Lunar south pole

Gimli is 2031, if all goes well, and then maybe follow-up exploration with this robot that might go into lava tubes.

Does this timeline potentially line up with NASA's Artemis plans? Also, Artemis is looking more at the South Pole.

Do we know about... like any lava tubes in the South Polar region? How does kind of Gimli mesh with what NASA already is trying to do with Artemis?

Sure.

I mean, Gimli is 2031, if all goes well, and then maybe follow up kind of exploration with this kind of other, this robot that might go into lava tubes.

Does this timeline potentially line up with NASA's Artemis plans? I mean, and also Artemis is looking more at the South Pole.

Do we know about... like any lava tubes in the south polar region? How does kind of Gimli mesh with what NASA already is trying to do with Artemis?

Sure.

Data gaps identify things that we don't really know enough about to even start to design solutions for.

Things like how much ice is in the South Polar region, the geotechnical properties of the regolith at the South Pole.

And a really big one for later on down the road when we get to Mars is what is the weather on Mars, right? We need to be able to predict the weather in order to be able to safely move astronauts around the surface of Mars.

So you've talked about the data gaps.

India claims to have touched the south pole of the moon, a place no nation had ever set foot.

Now, the man the world calls the father of China's lunar exploration program says it outright.

Not at all.

A grand declaration, a grander rebuttal, and a question hanging over the science pages of the two most populous civilizations on this planet.

Where, exactly, did that lander touch down? and is it even worth arguing about in the long telling that follows the story will be laid out in numbers alone the latitude of the touchdown the tilt of a rotational axis distances measured in kilometers across gray rock because numbers are the only things that cannot lie and the ending of this story perhaps is not about who was right and who was wrong but about a truth far larger how humanity measures its own glory it all erupted in late september twenty twenty three exactly one month after the night that one point for billion indians called historic a chinese scientist stepped before the public and with the carefulness of a man who has spent his whole life studying every grain of lunar dust raised a problem whose seriousness perhaps no one anticipated it is possible that the whole world in its moment of jubilation, mispronounced the name of a place, that scientist was eyeing Zhiyuan, and his argument spent not a single word on India's engineering, did not question whether the landing had happened, did not deny the images of the lunar surface beamed home by Chandrayaan-3's cameras, he asked only what sounds like a simple question the place where the lander set down is it the south pole and his answer was no not the south pole not even knew the south pole by the yardstick he believed to be correct was certain to understand why such a small question rang so loudly we must go back thirty-six days to an august night in the southern hemisphere of india where a mission numbered three of a program named Chandrayaan changed the way the world looks at the sky.

At 23.34 Indian Standard Time on the night of August 23, 2023, ISRO's mission control in Bengaluru fell silent in a way unlike any ordinary launch night.

No one was waiting for a rocket to climb.

But for Indians, that was not even the most important part.

that if,

let's say, China puts a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface, what happens? Well, some of those interesting places that we want to go back and mine and explore, it's in the southern pole.

And within the Southern Pole, it's probably, I don't know, 5, 10, 15 places that are prime locations.

And we say, well, why can't we all go there? I mean, international law says that no one can own a piece of the moon.

But international law also lends itself or says that we have to respect boundaries where there's safety.