NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati recently visited our lunar simulation laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where students are investigating next-generation materials to be deployed as sensors on the Moon’s surface. Following the tour, Dr. Abdalati, who was director of the university’s Earth Science and Observation Center before moving on to NASA in January, asked the intriguing question, “What would you do next to move NASA’s human exploration forward beyond LEO [low Earth orbit]?” We believe that journeys outside the near-Earth environs should begin to advance the U.S. space program beyond the artificial separation between science and human exploration and instead build on this symbiotic relationship. By necessity, exploration of surfaces must involve geology, engineering science, chemistry, physics and astronomy.