From Japan and L.A., ventures seek to tread familiar turf: the moon.

The value of trying to generate excitement shouldn't be underestimated. Dr. Friedman notes that a return to the moon carries some serious "been-there, done-that" baggage. He recalls attending an international lunar conference in Beijing last year that drew a large number of students, as well as scientists and engineers. "The students worked over one of the scientists: 'Why should we do this? The United States did it 30 years ago. What are we going to learn that they didn't?' There was a lot of pushing on that subject," he says.

What about Mars?

Other space-exploration advocates have expressed similar sentiments. For instance, Robert Zubrin, who heads the Mars Society, has long argued that the next step for human exploration should be Mars – not the moon – and that the technology is in hand to accomplish at least an initial manned mission to the red planet.

Yet if one thinks of the moon as a stepping stone, rather than a final destination, it has a lot going for it, others argue. It's close, so if something goes wrong – à la Apollo 13 – in principle, you're only a few days' travel from home. Thus, it's a good place to develop approaches to living and working on an inhospitable orb.

And as far as scientific discovery is concerned, the moon is anything but passé. Scientists have outlined an ambitious set of questions about the moon's structure and history whose answers can shed light on a range of puzzles regarding the Earth-moon system and the solar system as a whole. And the moon may be able to host a range of telescopes or other observing systems that can peer at the cosmos or keep tabs on planet-scale environmental changes on Earth. The National Academy of Sciences' Space Science Board outlined a range of these objectives and suggests pathways for reaching them in a report it released earlier this year.

For now, one major step forward would be to get spacefaring nations with an interest in lunar exploration rowing together in a coordinated fashion.

In addition to the mission Japan has just launched, China is expected to loft a lunar orbiter this fall followed by an Indian orbiter next April and the US Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later next year. The Europeans, whose SMART-1 mission to the moon ended last year after three years of gathering data and testing technologies, also aim to put astronauts on the moon by the end of the next decade. The Space Science Board has recommended that NASA strengthen its links to these and other international lunar exploration programs to avoid duplication – particularly in unmanned missions – as much as possible.

The panel has also asked the space agency to do what it can to stimulate lunar studies on Earth and help develop the tools that can make sense of the torrent of data these and other missions are expected to unleash.

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