Landing the first astronauts on the Moon remains one of the US’s greatest achievements. Its enduring images are of American astronauts, an American flag and mission control in Houston. The reality is even more remarkable. Behind them was a communications network spanning California, Spain and Australia. An antenna near Canberra relayed the television pictures of Neil Armstrong’s first steps to the world.
Engineering expertise also came from beyond US borders. Canadian engineers helped design the lunar module and develop the heat shield that protected the returning astronauts. Scientific knowledge and technical ability travel more widely than the familiar images of national achievement suggest.
That international contribution remains essential. When Artemis II carried astronauts around the Moon in April this year, its crew included Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Orion’s European Service Module provided propulsion, electricity, air and water. Co-operation was present in both the crew and the systems keeping them alive.
As we mark World Space Week, these achievements offer a wider lesson about how technology advances. Progress depends on people sharing knowledge and building on discoveries made across institutions and borders. Bringing that expertise together allows humans to solve increasingly difficult problems, with results that can create opportunities far beyond the original purpose of the research.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, we are preparing to lead a new collaboration with the US State Department. The 18-month project begins in November and will bring together 15 graduate students from the UAE and 15 from the US to design and build small lunar rovers.
Their work will draw on research into a challenge familiar to the Apollo astronauts: Moon dust. Fine, abrasive and prone to clinging to equipment, it makes operating machinery difficult. A rover that performs well on a laboratory floor still has much to prove before it can travel across the lunar surface.
Our laboratory has developed the Emirates Lunar Simulant, using rock found in the UAE to reproduce important properties of lunar soil. We matched the mineral composition and grain size of soil from the lunar highlands around the South Pole, where Artemis and the UAE’s future missions are headed. We began developing it because importing simulants was expensive, particularly in the quantities our experiments required. It is also a strategic asset: the ability to test lunar hardware at home, on our own schedule, for our own missions and for our partners. Our planetary simulation chamber also lets us test equipment under extreme temperatures and vacuum conditions.
These capabilities give international partners a reason to work here. US students will join their UAE counterparts in our laboratory, while the UAE-based students will visit the Colorado School of Mines, our partner with expertise in lunar exploration and space resources. Each team will develop a rover with a specific scientific objective, taking it through design reviews, construction and testing.
We plan to involve specialists with Artemis experience and to work closely with the UAE's national space institutions, including the engineers behind the Rashid rovers. The aim is to develop proposals for lunar missions that advance the UAE's goals in lunar exploration. The teams will have to defend their designs, revise assumptions and bring different kinds of expertise to bear on the same problem.
For the UAE, this is a practical way to deepen its contribution to exploration. Facilities developed locally can support both national missions and international research. The experience gained through those partnerships then helps us undertake more demanding work.
Lunar exploration also pushes those involved in this sector to rethink how technology is designed. The extremely high cost of transporting equipment to the Moon demands lighter designs and more efficient use of energy. Batteries that store more energy for their weight, or instruments that operate on far less power, could make more ambitious missions possible. Advances developed to meet these demands could also have substantial commercial value on Earth, with applications in electric vehicles, energy storage and consumer electronics.
There is a precedent. Nasa’s work on silver-zinc batteries during and after Apollo helped lay the foundations for rechargeable hearing aid batteries commercialised decades later. Further development by industry was essential. Scientific progress can create opportunities whose eventual applications take years to emerge.
We are beginning discussions about commercial uses for our own expertise. Future industries will need people who can turn an idea into working technology, and facilities where they can test it. Research partnerships help develop both. Students may go on to join space agencies, work in established companies or create businesses of their own.
They are already discovering the pleasure of making something work. Students in our lab have designed rover components, 3D-printed them, fitted motors and written software. When something failed, they changed the design and tried again. They now have a functioning rover. They are excited about what comes next, even as they discover how demanding this work can be.
World Space Week celebrates the contribution of space science and technology to improving human life. That purpose should guide how we judge our efforts. A mission’s legacy includes the people it trains, the discoveries others can build upon and the practical uses that follow. For the students preparing to work together in Abu Dhabi, those possibilities are still unfolding.
Giving them the expertise, facilities and international relationships to pursue them is an investment whose value can extend far beyond the Moon.
