This is the 10-meter South Pole Telescope and the BICEP(Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) Telescope with the Milky Way visible in the sky above. This is the instrument that just confirmed Einstein's 100 year old postulate that there are detectable ripples, or gravitational waves, in time/space, left over from the Big Bang 13.8Billion years ago, that confirm the expansion of the universe.
In the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe went from the size of a marble to larger than the current observable universe. These gravitational waves caused some parts to expand faster than others, which caused the matter therein to eventually coalesce into what would become stars.
Cosmology, colonization, and He-3 mining are the three reasons humans should return to the Moon and then to Mars. Imagine what we could learn about our origins with Mars or Moon-based telescopes?
I hope I live long enough to see a permanent, manned Moon-base and at least one manned mission to Mars.
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