Four decades after the first humans landed on the Moon, our only natural satellite remains a fascinating enigma. Specialists from Europe and the US have been looking at ESA’s proposed Lunar Lander mission to find out how to seek water and other volatile resources.

Prestigious scientists who worked on the Apollo programme like Larry Taylor, from the University of Tennessee (US), and Colin Pillinger, from the Open University (UK), gathered at ESA’s ESTEC space technology centre in the Netherlands to discuss the mission on May 16 and 17. Bruno Gardini, from ESA’s Human Spaceflight and Operations directorate, envisages a European astronaut working on the Moon. Wolfgang Seboldt, from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), believes that robotic missions to the Moon are a good preparation for the human exploration of the Solar System.