Satellites around the Moon

What's the future of satellites? Well, one day, they will help us explore the Moon and Mars, as Martin Sweeting explained to Graihagh Jackson...

Martin - I think it's inevitable that we will see sustained human inhabitation on the Moon.  That's probably a good stepping stone for Mars and what we will see is that we'll need the same space infrastructure that we have on Earth placed around the Moon and on Mars.

Graihagh - That's like something out of a Sci-fi movie?

Martin - Yes, but there's a lot of things that were in Sci-fi movies 20 years ago that we take for granted.  I can remember as a kid going to the B movies and seeing these black and white science fiction and they were rather old even then.  Science fiction movies where doors magically opened as you came in and that people have little, what now we would look at as a smart phone.  These things were considered absolutely outlandish and they were very simple things which now we don't even give a second thought to so, 20 years hence, anything's possible.