NASA plans base on Moon with advanced rovers

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced new details about its plans for a base on the Moon that would include a pair of small, pressurized rovers with a range of nearly 600 miles.

The space agency plans to return astronauts to the Moon around 2020.

NASA officials had first detailed the proposals in December 2006 for a polar lunar base powered by near-constant sunlight on solar panels.

Earlier proposals to carry small habitation modules to the Moon in stages might be supplanted by a proposal that would heave a single large module to the Moon on an unmanned cargo ship, according to Doug Cooke, NASA’s official leading the lunar study group.

The new rover would not be much larger than the buggies that the Apollo astronauts drove, but would be pressurized so that astronauts could drive in shirt sleeves and be protected from radiation.

To explore on foot, astronauts would put on spacesuits and leave the vehicle.

Doug Cooke said NASA’s revised lunar plan calls for the launching of larger habitats to the moon on unmanned cargo flights. That way, the first new lunar astronauts could begin to reap rewards of science faster than if they had to haul smaller habitat sections and hardware to the moon on each flight, then combine them into a larger base to support long-duration expeditions.

Cooke added: “We want to get scientific return. We want to get information that will help, potentially, space commerce and we want to get international participation early. We want to address all of these objectives as early in the flights as we possibly can by getting the outpost up and running quickly.”

The NASA scientists say they have also discussed nuclear energy as a power supply for the habitat, since that might be necessary for building a successful encampment on Mars.

They have also discussed making the lunar lander and habitat mobile so that the base could be moved for exploration of other areas.

NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020 using its successor to the space shuttle – the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares I booster – as well as the Ares V heavy-lift rocket.

The updated plans were discussed at a recent conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on September 20, 2007 in Long Beach, California.