The moon should be developed as a sanctuary for civilization in case of a cataclysmic cosmic impact, according to an international team of experts.  NASA already has blueprints to create a permanent lunar outpost by the 2020s. (Read: "Moon Base Announced by NASA" [December 4, 2006].)

But that plan should be expanded to include a way to preserve humanity's learning, culture, and technology if Earth is hit by a doomsday asteroid or comet, said Jim Burke, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Burke, a project manager on some of the earliest American lunar landings, now heads an International Space University study on surviving a collision with a near-Earth object.

An impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs hasn't happened since long before the rise of humans, he pointed out.

Yet scientists' expanding knowledge of asteroids and craters left throughout the solar system has created a consensus that Earth remains vulnerable to a civilization-crushing collision.

This calls for the creation of a space age Noah's ark, Burke said.

 Source : National Geographic Online