NASA to build permanent base on the moon
Pastor Dale Morgan
NASA to build permanent base on the moon*
By Irene Klotz in Florida
December 05, 2006 09:15am
Article from: Reuters
NASA says it plans to build a permanently occupied base on the moon,
most likely at the lunar north pole.
The habitat will serve as a science outpost as well as a testbed for
technologies needed for future travel to Mars, and construction will
follow a series of flights to the moon scheduled to begin by 2020.
"We're going for a base on the moon," Scott "Doc" Horowitz, NASA's
associate administrator for exploration, said from the Johnson Space
Centre in Houston.
Plans for what the base will look like and what astronauts would do
there have yet to be determined. Similarly, NASA has not projected a
date when the base would go into operation.
The moon's polar sites are preferred to equatorial regions because of
more moderate temperatures and longer periods of sunlight, which is
critical for the solar-powered electrical systems NASA plans to develop.
Eventually, nuclear power may be used to augment or replace the solar
energy systems.
Scientists also suspect the poles have resources such as hydrogen, ice
and other materials that could be used for life support.
"It's exciting," said NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale. "We don't
know as much about the polar regions."
The US had already announced plans to develop new spacecraft to travel
to the moon and land on its surface for the first time since the last
Apollo flight there in 1972. It also plans to provide a communications
system linking Earth and the moon.
But NASA doesn't plan to go to the moon alone. The United States will
look for international and commercial partners to share the expense and
possibly provide components such as extra power systems, living quarters
and resources for surface travel on the moon.
NASA is not expecting a budget increase to pay for the program. Rather,
it will use funds that will become available as the space shuttle fleet
is phased out.
The shuttles are set to be retired in 2010. By that time, NASA plans to
have finished building the space station, leaving the moon initiative as
a successor to both programs. NASA receives about $US16 billion ($20bn)
a year.
Countries that already have been working with NASA to develop its
so-called Global Exploration Strategy are Australia, Canada, China,
Europe, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Italy, Japan,
Russia, South Korea and Ukraine.