President Donald Trump’s administration wants to send robotic explorers to the moon as early as next year and do another human lunar landing within 10 years, according to a NASA spokeswoman.
The push could result in the first Americans stepping foot on the moon’s surface 55 years after doing so for the first time, NASA spokeswoman Megan Powers said.
Meanwhile, Trump plans to sign a directive Monday to better track and monitor space debris as commercial and civil space traffic increases.
The 1960s-era Apollo program to land U.S. astronauts on the moon was driven by President John F. Kennedy’s famous challenge and zealously funded by a Congress motivated by the Soviet Union’s perceived existential threat. That goal was achieved by the crew of Apollo 11 in 1969.
NASA’s current planning for Mars isn’t driven by any such urgency. The agency’s priorities tend to change depending on the administration: Under President George W. Bush, NASA was directed to return to the moon, while President Barack Obama set Mars as the longer-term priority. The Trump administration aims to do both, planning a lunar “gateway” orbiter and landings on the moon’s surface -- with heavy assistance from commercial firms -- and then using those outposts as a leaping-off point for Mars.
Bush proposed in 2004 sending robotic probes to the lunar surface by 2008, with a human mission as early as 2015, “with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time.”
NASA estimated in 2005 that the Bush program to return to the moon, canceled by Obama, would cost $104 billion. The Trump administration didn’t immediately provide a cost estimate.
The Trump administration’s first crewed lunar gateway mission is planned for 2023 under NASA’s current plans, with humans heading to Mars in the 2030s.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.