Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

What’s wrong with this picture? Missing in this artwork are small craters, dust, dirty equipment and dirty astronauts. Image credit: NASA

GOLDEN, Colorado – Earth’s Moon is in need of good and accurate artists!

“We see the misconception of a flat, gentle moon everywhere,” complains one lunar expert.

As the NASA Artemis program hits its stride, and in a few years “reboots” our moon with a human presence, there’s an urgent need to guard against artistic misrepresentations of the lunar landscape.

Lunar renderings

We’ve all seen those alluring lunar renderings of vehicles and astronauts shuffling and bounding about while setting up equipment and putting in place a moon base.

“We are telling the public the moon is easy….it is not!”

Daniel Britt, the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida.
Image credit: Barbara David

That’s the matter-of-fact warning from Daniel Britt, the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He’s also the director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science.

For more details, go to my new Space.com story – “’Let’s not fool the public’: Why moon art should be more realistic in the Artemis age” – at:

https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/lets-not-fool-the-public-why-moon-art-should-be-more-realistic-in-the-artemis-age