AMoon rock now sits in the Oval Office. It was chipped from a boulder in the Taurus-Littrow Valley in 1972, the same year Joe Biden came to Washington, D.C., and is a nice conversation piece for visiting diplomats. Whether it is just a historical artifact or heralds what is to come depends on actions and decisions made today. On that score, the evidence is mixed. On one hand, the world’s richest men—Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—are bankrolling rockets and spacecraft to the Moon and beyond However, political turnover in Washington, D.C. has injected uncertainty into the government’s role and tempo of deep space development and settlement. The next steps in our return to the Moon will determine the course of human spaceflight through the decade and beyond.
Credit: SpaceX