While Beijing and Moscow have joined forces to establish a lunar research base, Washington’s limited support for bioregenerative life support research puts its space competitiveness at risk, a team of scientists including Nasa researchers has found.
The team said that past research and policy decisions – such as funding and programme cuts – had created “critical gaps” in Nasa’s current space habitation capabilities.
“Now on the verge of returning to the moon, Nasa needs to develop the critical capabilities required to build and operate a lunar outpost,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal npj Microgravity on August 16.
The paper was written by researchers from Purdue University, Northeastern University, Utah State University, the University of Utah, and Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre and Ames Research Centre.
