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That means visiting more places and collecting samples far afield. The crew of Apollo 17, for instance, drove roughly 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) on the Moon over three days. Traversing that same distance took NASA\u2019s Opportunity Mars rover more than eight years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gathering data on another world sounds like something you could automate like a farm. But in many cases, it turns out to be more like running a garden: something that takes a delicate touch and a sense of nuance. That\u2019s where people work best. Any experiment that requires careful handling, scouting, or setup is almost always better left to astronauts.<\/p>\n
The instruments slated for Artemis III, the program\u2019s first Moon landing mission, are perfect examples. Astronauts will have to carefully pick plants in a terrarium-like experiment, scout the ideal location for a soil probe, and adjust a seismometer to be in perfect contact with the ground. These tasks would be difficult for a robot to do, but are relatively simple for an astronaut.<\/p>\n
Bigger, more complex experiments will depend on astronauts even more. Megaprojects like large drills, huge telescopes, and sprawling factories to\u00a0extract resources may all need more construction and troubleshooting than robots can do on their own. This is why many people imagine a future for\u00a0\u00a0lunar exploration \u2014 at least, with anything resembling current technology \u2014 that depends on crewed missions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n