In a recent study, a collaborative team of researchers discuss the potential for future lunar settlers to establish a backup data storage system of human activity in the event of a global catastrophe on Earth that could be used to recover human civilization on a post-catastrophe planet. This comes as NASA's Artemis missions plan to send people back to the moon for the first time since 1972, coupled with current global events such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the War in Ukraine, with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently threatening nuclear war. Given the current state of world affairs, how important is it to establish a type of off-world data backup?

"The COVID-19 pandemic taught us how vulnerable our world is to large-scale disasters because of its growing interconnectivity," says Carson Ezell, who is an undergraduate at Harvard University, the Director of Space Futures Initiative, and lead author on the study.

The third (pictured) and fourth European Service Modules are currently in production at Airbus facilities in Bremen, Germany. They are key elements of the Orion spacecraft, the first to return humans to the moon since the 1970s.

These modules provide the spacecraft with propulsion, power and thermal control, and will supply astronauts with water and oxygen. The Orion spacecraft is composed of a European Service Module, a Crew Module Adapter and a Crew Module. The latter two components are provided by NASA.

Powering flights to the moon is a collaborative effort. The components and hardware used in the European Service Modules are built and supplied by more than twenty different companies from ten different countries in Europe.

When ready for launch, each module will have a total mass of 13,500 kg, almost two-thirds of which is propellant (rocket fuel). More than 11 km of cables are needed to send commands and receive information from the many on-board sensors. As can be seen in the photo, tie-wraps (yellow) come in handy when it comes to keeping all these cables organized.