Fifty-two years after the last moon landing, countries and companies are rushing back to the lunar surface.

Are many lunar missions in the works? 
The moon has been relatively quiet since NASA last put a manned spacecraft on the lunar surface in 1972. But our nearest neighbor is now experiencing a flurry of activity, with numerous nations launching and planning missions to analyze its surface, search for ice, and otherwise explore. The U.S. kicked off its new lunar program in November 2022 with the blastoff of Artemis 1, which sent an unmanned Orion crew capsule around the moon. NASA aims to return astronauts to the moon in 2026 and eventually create a permanent lunar base camp at the possibly ice-rich south pole. India last year became the first country to land a spacecraft in the southern polar region and the fourth nation — after the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China — to reach the moon. Japan became the fifth last month. But the U.S.'s main lunar competitor is China. It has sent rovers to the moon three times since 2013, made the first landing on its far side in 2019, and aims to put boots on the lunar surface by 2030 and to build a base there soon after. Beijing wants "to be the space power of the 21st century," a U.S. intelligence official told the Miami Herald, "the way we were in the 20th." Globally, more than 100 lunar missions are planned by 2030, many of which will be conducted by private companies. 

Have any private missions touched down yet? 
Two private ventures have tried and failed. Tokyo-based ispace attempted the first private moon landing in April 2023, but its craft ran out of fuel and smashed into the surface. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic last month launched its 6-foot-tall Peregrine lander, which among its payloads was carrying NASA science experiments and mini rovers from the Mexican Space Agency. A fuel leak doomed the craft, which burned up over the Pacific. Next up is Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which will attempt to land its Volkswagen Beetle-size Nova-C lander in the south polar region later this month. Dozens of other private missions are in development, including the November launch of a SpaceX rocket that will carry VIPER, NASA's golf cart–size water-hunting rover, to the south pole in an Astrobotic-built lander. Many of those efforts stem from a public-private partnership created by NASA in 2018 to cut costs and accelerate mission development. The agency has so far signed contracts worth $2.6 billion with 14 companies to send up spacecraft carrying NASA projects as well as payloads from other countries and companies. Firms are also contracting to design spacesuits, create rovers, and build lunar solar farms and nuclear power systems. 

Why all the interest in the moon? 
Because it's a step toward reaching deeper into space. If humans can build the infrastructure needed to survive in such an inhospitable environment — where astronauts will be bombarded with 200 times more radiation than on Earth, and temperatures can drop to minus 410 degrees Fahrenheit in deep craters — they will be better equipped to live on Mars, where conditions are even more hostile. "The moon is the proving ground, but Mars is the destination," then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in 2019. Identifying and extracting ice will be key to sustaining human colonies on the moon. That ice could also be refined into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the components of rocket fuel, making the moon a potential refueling stop for deep-space missions. And there are other valuable resources on our rocky neighbor. 

What else is up there? 
Research suggests the moon holds large amounts of rare-earth metals — used in electronic components and radiation shielding — as well as aluminum, titanium, and Helium-3, a potential fuel for nuclear fusion. Moon-bound companies and national governments are interested not just in prestige and exploration but also in potential profit. "This is a quest for treasure," said John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Who has rights to those resources? 
There's no global consensus on that. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by the U.S. and more than 100 other countries, says all countries are free to explore the moon and that none can claim sovereignty. But a 2015 U.S. law gives American citizens the right to "possess, own, transport, use, and sell" resources pulled from the moon. More than 30 nations have signed the U.S.-drafted Artemis Accords, a nonbinding framework that calls on nations to share scientific data and allows countries or companies to create "safety zones" for extracting mined "resources," specifying that such activity does not violate the 1967 treaty. But neither China nor Russia is a party to the deal, and there are concerns that tensions could rise as the U.S. and China compete for lunar supremacy. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that if China establishes a foothold first, "it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, 'Keep out, we're here, this is our territory.'" 

Are there other concerns? 
There are worries about how various lunar efforts might be coordinated. Extraction efforts, for instance, might clash with research operations and despoil a virgin landscape that could offer insights into our solar system. Private landers will bring with them not just scientific instruments but artworks, time capsules, and other artifacts to set on the moon permanently. Some experts say concerns about international competition for resources are overblown, given the slow pace at which expeditions are likely to unfold, but others say the time for careful consideration is at hand. "This is happening now," said science writer Rebecca Boyle, author of the book Our Moon. And "there's really no road map."

A hard landing 
As private companies vie to reach the moon, they'll face an intractable reality that numerous space agencies have grappled with: Landing there is a daunting feat. The moon is littered with debris from failed missions. The Soviet Union blew 11 tries before making the first successful soft lunar landing in 1966. Five of the 10 attempted landings since 2013 have failed, including an effort by an Israeli firm in 2019 and a Russian bid last year. What makes it so hard "is the number of variables to consider," says Stephen Indyk of Maryland-based Honeybee Robotics. There's virtually no atmosphere to slow spacecraft as they descend; the craggy, cratered terrain can be treacherous; and landings kick up giant amounts of dust that can jam sensors. Landing near the mountainous south pole, as Astrobotic will aim to do in November, is especially difficult. Of course, "scientists take pride in doing hard things," said Israeli astrophysicist Ehud Behar. "It's like mountaineers. You ask a mountaineer, 'Why are you climbing the mountain?' The answer is 'Because it's there.'"

"It's about time," said Francis Wilkinson in Bloomberg. Jennifer Crumbley last week became the first parent to be convicted of manslaughter over a mass shooting committed by their child — a "leap forward" in accountability for parents"who make guns available to troubled offspring." Crumbley's son, Ethan, was 15 when he killed four classmates and wounded seven other people at his Michigan high school in 2021; he's now serving a life sentence. As prosecutors showed in court, Crumbley, 45, could have prevented this bloodshed. Months before the shooting, Ethan told her he was seeing demons. Crumbley and her husband, James — who will go on trial next month — ignored his pleas for help. Rather than get him therapy, they bought this "deeply disturbed boy" a handgun and took him to a shooting range. On the day of the massacre, the Crumbleys were called to the school and shown drawings by Ethan of a bloodied body next to the phrase "The thoughts won't stop." They refused to take Ethan home and didn't mention the gun or check his bag. He returned to class, and soon after pulled out the firearm and opened fire. 

Crumbley was clearly "neglectful and self-absorbed," said Kaitlyn Buss in The Detroit News. But this verdict creates a potential "Pandora's box" of a precedent. Legal scholars worry parents could now be convicted or pressured into plea deals for their children's crimes not just because they left a gun unsecured but also because they failed to discipline or get treatment for their child. Crumbley's prosecutors seized on "choice details about her personal life," including an extramarital affair, said Megan K. Stack in The New York Times. But there's little evidence to suggest that she thought Ethan posed "a real danger" to anyone but himself. Still, "we crave villains to blame" for our nonstop parade of massacres. Crumbley's conviction seems more about the scapegoating of one woman for our lethally lax gun laws than about "clear-cut criminal intent." 

"So what?" said Joe Nocera in The Free Press. Parental carelessness around guns has resulted in enough accidents and homicides to make firearms the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers. Would it be better if Congress passed tough gun safety laws? "Of course it would. But that's never going to happen." The best we can do is parade Crumbley in shackles to send a warning to other gun-owning parents. It might seem "incredibly unfair" to her — but if children's lives are saved, "that's a secondary concern."

Growing up in small-town Ontario, Ryan Gosling had no idea that an acting career was a possibility, said Ramin Setoodeh in Variety. But when he was 7 or 8, his uncle Bill took him aside and predicted he'd one day win an Academy Award. "I'd never heard of [the Oscars] before, and I wasn't an actor," says Gosling, 43. "It came out of nowhere. He pulled out this big scrapbook and said, 'I'm going to fill this with all your accomplishments until you do.'" Wanting to do right by his uncle, Gosling began singing at weddings and malls and auditioning for acting parts. At 12 he was cast in The All New Mickey Mouse Club. The experience was far from glamorous. He lived in a Florida trailer park "where there was a gas leak, my mom and I were tired all the time." Gosling spent a lot of his time "hustling" and "not feeling like I was very good in anything on Mickey Mouse Club." But those years would help inspire his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Ken, the existential angst-ridden himbo in Barbie. "I was a hamster in Mickey Mouse Club. I could relate to Ken and the need to find and distinguish yourself." It was Gosling's decision to bleach his hair to play Ken. "What was weird was I ended up looking like I did at 8 or 12, which was the era I was revisiting anyway."