The Moon race (part deux) is officially in full swing now with Japan, India, China, and even a private corporation making their marks on the surface. The calendar is packed with a whole slew of planned missions in the coming months and years to set the stage for a more sustained presence on the lunar surface. But some astronomers want to use the Moon for something perhaps less expendable than water ice — sorry, fans of For All Mankind — or a cosmic home base: a vantage point to peer into Cosmic Dark Ages.

Getting a look at the Cosmic Dark Ages — the period when the early universe was covered in pure darkness — has long been a holy grail for astronomers. It could tell us about the most fundamental aspects of our Universe and potentially help solve mysteries that puzzle us today.

If engineers and astronomers at private companies, universities, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory have their way, the far side of the moon could soon be the spot from which astronomers stare 13 billion years back in time, to an era before the first stars were born.

When Alex Garland wrote the script for 28 Days Later, he was simply an accomplished novelist making his first major crossover into Hollywood. But over two decades later, he returns to the franchise a lauded director with modern sci-fi classics like Ex Machina and Annihilation under his belt. However, with the Civil War filmmaker pondering a break from directing “for the foreseeable future,” it was the chance to get back to just screenwriting that drew him to the zombie franchise.