Was there ever life on the moon? What about on other planets?

With the U.S. slated to blast off soon to orbit the moon—its first trip there in 50 years—the University of Virginia and NASA's Artemis space missions seek to answer big questions like these, while pushing the scope of what can be analyzed on alien soils.

The new collaborative research will take the form of a roving, ground-level probe. It won't be done in time for this first unmanned launch, of course.

Instead, the technology could be part of a future mission to the moon—and perhaps beyond. The space program is also contemplating putting humans on Mars.

"The basic idea of this NASA-funded project is to obtain biological and elemental signatures, as well to detect surface morphology, to determine whether there was any life," said engineering professor and principal investigator Mool Gupta, in whose laser lab a key portion of the technology will be created.

On its mission to the Moon, NASA's Orion spacecraft is designed to use NASA's Near Space Network and Deep Space Network to navigate. But if the craft loses communication with the ground or the Networks, crews can use a backup autonomous navigation system known as Optical Navigation (OpNav). This system analyzes images of the Moon or Earth taken from the spacecraft to determine its position relative to either of those two bodies.

An investigation currently underway aboard the International Space Station is helping developers of OpNav fine-tune the system to ensure that crews return home safely. The Moon Imagery investigation uses photographs of the Moon taken from the space station to calibrate the system software.

"The space station gives us a platform to collect images of the Moon without interference from Earth's atmosphere," says principal investigator Steve Lockhart at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA's Artemis 1 mission is poised to take a key step toward returning humans to the moon after a half-century hiatus. The launch was scheduled for the morning of Aug. 29, 2022, but was postponed due to an issue with one of the rocket's engines. The next opportunity to launch the rocket is Sept. 2, 2022. The mission is a shakedown cruise—sans crew—for NASA's Space Launch System and Orion Crew Capsule.

The spacecraft is scheduled to travel to the moon, deploy some small satellites and then settle into orbit. NASA aims to practice operating the spacecraft, test the conditions crews will experience on and around the moon, and assure everyone that the spacecraft and any occupants can safely return to Earth.

The Conversation asked Jack Burns, a professor and space scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and former member of the Presidential Transition Team for NASA, to describe the mission, explain what the Artemis program promises to do for space exploration, and reflect on how the space program has changed in the half-century since humans last set foot on the lunar surface.

A team of researchers led by CU Boulder is sending some unexpected hitchhikers to the moon: Twelve bags filled with baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), the same kind of hard-working cells that make bread rise and ferment beer and wine.

As early as Friday, a rocket taller than the Statue of Liberty is scheduled to blast off from a launch pad in Florida, carrying NASA's new Orion space capsule into Earth's orbit for the first time. From there, the spacecraft, designed to transport four astronauts, will begin a 42-day journey to the moon and back to Earth.

There aren't any humans aboard this mission, called Artemis 1. But that doesn't mean there won't be passengers. Three human mannequins, named Moonikin Campos, Helga and Zohar, will fly aboard Orion—as will four biological experiments, including one designed by a team at BioServe Space Technologies, a center in the Ann and H.J.