Before astronauts return to the Moon, some of them are learning to think like geologists. Europe's PANGAEA course, now in its tenth edition, trains astronauts to identify rocks and understand their history. This year's participants were Pablo Álvarez Fernández of ESA, NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, and Kimiya Yui of Japan's space agency. Over three weeks, they moved from classroom lessons to field sites across Europe.
In Italy's Bletterbach canyon, they practiced describing rock layers. At the Ries crater in Germany, they studied the marks left by an asteroid impact. On the Spanish island of Lanzarote, they explored volcanic landscapes and made more of their own decisions, with scientists supporting them from a distance. The course teaches more than recognizing an interesting rock. Crews have to set priorities together, share the work, and stay in contact with teams on the ground. On the Moon, there will be little time to see why a sample matters and describe it to researchers back on Earth. Since 2016, the program has trained 19 astronauts from four space agencies.