Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Wait, we’re putting a national park on the Moon now?

By

national park on the Moon headerIf you thought sweating it behind the wheel through hundreds of miles of mind-numbing Nebraska cornfields to get to Yellowstone National Park was rough, you may not be cut out for America’s next great national park. It’s 238,900 miles away.

Yes, America may soon have a new national park on the Moon, thanks to legislation bravely introduced by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), whose courage is surpassed only by the astronauts she seeks to honor. (We’re talking about Earth’s moon by the way – don’t get all outlandish and go thinking we would try to create a park on one of Saturn’s moons, you crazy knucklehead.)

Recommended Videos

Why spend precious legislative time to preserve land on a chunk of rock in space that nobody has even set foot on in more than 40 years? To ensure our nation’s proud history isn’t trampled by moon vandals, extraterrestrial delinquents and other astrocretins, of course. Haven’t Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith been warning us about them for years?

House Resolution 2617 would specifically preserve the sites related to the Apollo Missions, like the still-present footprints where Neil Armstrong left “one small step for man” in 1969, the lunar rover from Apollo 15, and even debris from the infamously aborted Apollo 13. You see, on Earth we use National Parks to preserve our nation’s most pristine natural beauty; on the Moon we preserve our own space garbage.

On Earth we use National Parks to preserve our nation’s most pristine natural beauty; on the Moon we preserve our own space garbage.

Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so cynical there, this is actually one hell of an exciting development for fans of space and National Parks like myself. I look forward to the point where space travel becomes so routine that a trip to our Lunar National Park becomes as common as packing the family into the car and heading to the Grand Tetons. Yes, 238,900 miles might sound daunting for a summer vacation, but look on the bright side: It’s only 225,622 miles if you follow the advice of your friendly AAA guide and leave at perigee!

All our proudest road-trip traditions will translate just fine to the inky blackness of outer space: Halfway there the kids start whining about how Pop-O-Matic Trouble doesn’t work in zero gravity, Dad gets all agitated behind the joystick, swats at the kids in the back seat while threatening to turn the ship around, and before you know it everybody’s crying and Mom breaks out the dehydrated ice cream from the science museum to get everyone to shut up. Yup, my kids are gonna have it just like I did, Lunar National Park or not. Hopefully we’ve thawed some of that lunar water by the time I get there so I can throw them in deep end of Moon Lake and teach them to swim, too.

Of course, there is one tiny issue that may hold up this idyllic American dream: The United States might not actually have any authority to put a national park there. A United Nations treaty signed in 1967 specifically states, “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

Touche, United Nations. But your petty Outer Space Treaty is in direct contradiction with the superseding Law of Finders Keepers, which states, “We stuck a flag in first so we own it, idiots.”

Problem solved. Now where are we going to put the souvenir shop?

Topics
Nick Mokey
Nick Mokey
Managing Editor
As Digital Trends’ Managing Editor, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team delivering definitive reviews, enlightening…
James Webb observes extremely hot exoplanet with 5,000 mph winds
This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. WASP-43 b is a Jupiter-sized planet circling a star roughly 280 light-years away, in the constellation Sextans. The planet orbits at a distance of about 1.3 million miles (0.014 astronomical units, or AU), completing one circuit in about 19.5 hours. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-43 b is probably tidally locked: its rotation rate and orbital period are the same, such that one side faces the star at all times.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have modeled the weather on a distant exoplanet, revealing winds whipping around the planet at speeds of 5,000 miles per hour.

Researchers looked at exoplanet WASP-43 b, located 280 light-years away. It is a type of exoplanet called a hot Jupiter that is a similar size and mass to Jupiter, but orbits much closer to its star at just 1.3 million miles away, far closer than Mercury is to the sun. It is so close to its star that gravity holds it in place, with one side always facing the star and the other always facing out into space, so that one side (called the dayside) is burning hot and the other side (called the nightside) is much cooler. This temperature difference creates epic winds that whip around the planet's equator.

Read more
NASA selects 9 companies to work on low-cost Mars projects
This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red planet. The agency recently announced it has selected nine private companies that will perform a total of 12 studies into small-scale projects for enabling Mars science.

The companies include big names in aerospace like Lockheed Martin and United Launch Services, but also smaller companies like Redwire Space and Astrobotic, which recently landed on the surface of the moon. Each project will get a 12-week study to be completed this summer, with NASA looking at the results to see if it will incorporate any of the ideas into its future Mars exploration plans.

Read more
Japanese satellite chases down space junk
Image of a piece of space debris seen from Astroscale's ADRAS-J satellite.

There's a growing problem of junk cluttering up the space beyond our planet. Known as space debris, it consists of broken satellites, discarded rocket parts, and other tiny pieces of metal and other materials that move around the planet, often at extremely high speeds. Space debris has threatened the International Space Station and impacted China's space station, and junk from space has even fallen onto a house in the U.S. recently.

Many scientists have called for greater environmental protections of space, but how to deal with all the existing debris is an open problem. Much of the debris is hard to capture because it is oddly shaped or traveling at great speed. Cleanup suggestions have involved using magnets, or nets, or lasers. But now a system from Japanese company Astroscale has taken an up-close image of a piece of space debris it has been chasing down, and it could help make future cleanup easier.

Read more