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Return to the Moon?

The Sky at Night

For the first time in a generation there are credible plans to go to the moon. The team examine this renewed interest, and ask why it's happening now.

Nearly 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and it seemed like the dawn of a new age.

Soon we'd be flying to the moon as effortlessly as we fly to America, and a moon base would be filled with men and women building a better future out in space.

But then the moon fell out of fashion.

We soon realized it was brutally inhospitable and getting there was eye-wateringly expensive. Rather than spend huge sums of money going where we'd already been, Mars and the other planets seemed much more exciting destinations.

But now that is set to change.

For the first time in a generation, there are credible plans to go back to the moon, and maybe even build a working moon base.

The Sky at Night examines this renewed interest in the moon, and asks why it's happening now and who is at the forefront of this new wave of lunar exploration.

They meet the tech companies driven by big ambitions to launch a new era of space exploration using private money.

So, is a moon base really viable, or merely a pipe dream?

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30 minutes