Panel urges NASA to fetch Apollo 15 poop bags and hardware from moon

Astronauts should return to the Apollo 15 landing site on the moon and haul home some of its half-century-old poop and hardware, a panel told NASA on Wednesday.

A crew would land just north of the site at Mons Hadley — far enough away to avoid damaging it.

From there, the astronauts would walk over to inspect the rover, lander base, instruments, and power systems the prior crew left behind in 1971.

That equipment has endured decades of space radiation and repeated heating and cooling as lunar days give way to nights.

Scientists on Earth could study how the lunar environment impacts the hardware over time.

A close look at the urine and feces in a lab could reveal how biological material changes and whether it affects the area around it.

That "would be foundational information [for] how we need to engineer the systems for lunar bases," said Dan Dumbacher, co-chairperson of the committee, "for anything humans take to the surface of the moon." The mission proposal came from a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee, whom NASA asked to recommend future moon-landing sites away from the lunar south pole, where the agency already intends to build a long-term moon base .

In a new report , members of the committee selected four non-polar sites — Bhabha Crater, Mons Hadley, Orientale Basin , and Aristarchus Plateau — where they believe Artemis astronauts should collect samples, make observations, and conduct experiments.

They prioritized locations they believed would benefit from human explorers over uncrewed robots.

SEE ALSO: A telescope's survey got interrupted by a comet nobody knew existed These so-called " sorties ," the term NASA used when tasking the committee, would be short, one-time visits.

Because the poles lack the volcanic terrain found elsewhere on the moon, as well as radioactive metals like uranium and thorium, the brief trips would complement the base, not replace it, according to the report.

Each mission would send a pair of astronauts to make one to four moonwalks within 2 kilometers — or 1.2 miles — of their lander.

That distance is a previously established "walkback" limit NASA decided long ago that the committee thinks the agency should try to extend.

The panel also chose landing sites that offered the most opportunities for geology, biology, human health, and physics research.