It’s now more than 40 years since the last person set foot on the Moon, but since then we’ve come to realize that the lunar surface is not only home to plenty of rare-earth elements, such as lanthanum and neodynium, but also to more than a billion tonnes of water-ice at the poles. Several US firms in fact have bold plans to mine those resources, as our cover story this month explains. Elsewhere in the issue, we look at the challenges of “open data” – everyone’s up for it in principle, but making it work in practice is another thing altogether. There’s also a great feature on the future of iron-based superconductors by theorist Hideo Aoki and the discoverer of the first iron-based superconductor, Hideo Hosono. Don’t miss either our look at the future of particle colliders.
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