The south pole of the Moon just might be the hottest real estate in the Universe right now. Nearly every country with a space program has its eyes set on establishing a presence on the lunar surface’s south side. NASA, for example, is currently in the middle of its Artemis campaign, set to culminate with a permanent U.S. settlement there, and India, Russia, and China are all inching their way to our neighboring celestial body.

If this feels like deja vu, you’re not wrong. The original “space race” — a fierce battle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over who had the technology to conquer the cosmos first — began with the launch of Sputnik 1 and culminated with the U.S. landing the first crewed spacecraft, Apollo 11, on the moon. But now, over 50 years later, we may be entering an entirely new era of space exploration, one that seems poised to come with a race of its own.

Lucasfilm’s latest Disney+ series, Ahsoka, occupies an interesting place in Star Wars history. Like The Mandalorian, it takes place shortly after the events of the original trilogy, which covered the conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance.

While this new time period is chock full of possibilities for showrunner Dave Filoni, it’s also bringing legacy character Ahsoka Tano back into the fold. Her early history is well documented in The Clone Wars, but her life during the Empire’s reign is more nebulous. As a character, Ahsoka is relatively new; she was created by George Lucas in the early ‘00s, so she wasn’t in the original trilogy. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t active. If you’ve been wondering how the franchise explains away Ahsoka’s absence from the original trilogy, the answers are in less-explored chapters of her story.